Environmental Defense Criticizes New Report On Missouri River Dams

(22 April 2003 — Washington, D.C.) Environmental Defense today criticized the release today of a new Biological Opinion by the Fish & Wildlife Service regarding Missouri River dam operations.

“It is ironic that such a decision so offensive to the environment should be announced on Earth Day,” said Environmental Defense senior attorney Tim Searchinger. “Today’s opinion flatly contradicts 13 years of statements by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.  It disregards endangered species and the dire drought facing South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana that will cost those states millions of desperately needed acre-feet of water  to float a mere handful of barges on the lower Missouri.”

In 2000, the Fish & Wildlife Service issued a Biological Opinion on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers which required that the Corps of Engineers change how it operates the dams so that they include at least a modest semblance of the natural flow patterns, which included increasing flows in the spring and lower flows in the summer.  This opinion was supported by peer review science and effectively endorsed by a report of the National Academy of Sciences.  Although the Corps has been operating the river for ten years in violation of the Endangered Species Act, the Service gave the Corps until this year to make these changes.  This year the Corps has sought not to make these changes.

Environmental Defense is suing the Corps of Engineers in federal court to compel it to change its dam operations.  “We hope the court will see the new document as a delay tactic,” said Searchinger.