Dirt dumping leads to odd alliance
By KEN MIDKIFF
Published Friday, March 28, 2008
(http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/mar/20080328comm002.asp)

Dirt. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources tags it as sediment, and it is a pollutant.

Indeed, the EPA has levied fines and penalties on developers for allowing excessive amounts of sediment to pollute Hominy Branch. Sediment is harmful to aquatic life in streams where spawning areas get covered. Ozark streams are particularly susceptible to pollution from excessive sediment, mostly because they are typically very clear.

But that’s not to say there aren’t "natural" levels of sediment. When rainfall occurs, streams turn muddy and brown from sediment loads. Just about every spring, when hard rains fall and before vegetation slows down runoff, Ozark streams run high and muddy.

The Missouri River, on the other hand, has been dammed many times, and the sediment that would normally come down the river from the plains of eastern Montana, Nebraska and the Dakotas settles out in the upstream reservoirs created by those dams. The Missouri River is "sediment starved." Aquatic life in the Big Muddy had adapted to eons of such sediment and is not now faring so well. Several species, adapted to and dependent upon what had been, are now listed as "endangered" by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

No doubt, the Missouri River is a bit tinged. The water is typically murky, and quite often brown. It still has some sediment, but not nearly as much as before the big dams were built in Montana, the Dakotas and Nebraska.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, complying with the dictates of the federal Endangered Species Act, had been attempting to create spawning areas for recovery of one endangered species - the pallid sturgeon - by digging channels away from the mainstem Missouri. It is known that for successful hatching and early life stages it is necessary to create less swift waters. Hence, the creation of channels. One such might be viewed across the river from the Katy Trail on the way to Rocheport. There are others up and down the river on federally owned lands.

The dirt from the excavated channels was rather unceremoniously dumped into the Missouri River. The corps reasoned that becausee the river was lacking in sediment, loads of dirt would be beneficial.
Not so fast, said Kristen Perry of the Missouri Clean Water Commission. Farmers are expected to take measures to prevent contaminated runoff. Shouldn’t the corps do the same?

The key word is "contaminated." Perry insisted that agricultural chemicals might be present in the dirt the corps was placing in the river and therefore contamination would occur.

One little problem. The corps is creating the channels - and dumping dirt - in areas that have not been farmed since 1992. Those must be some really long-lived agricultural chemicals if they are still toxic after 16 years. But, to be sure, the corps needs to conduct tests of the dirt.

There is a "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, created mostly from runoff of nitrogen fertilizer in the corn-growing Midwestern states, including Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and, yes, Missouri. This a hypoxic area, where the presence of nitrogen results in an explosion of tiny oceanic creatures. These creatures die, and in the process of decomposition, use up oxygen. Shrimp and other aquatic life move out of the oxygen-deprived area.

Consequently, the dead zone is highly detrimental to the shrimp fishing industry in Louisiana. The dead zone is created by polluted runoff, not caused by farm chemicals from 1992, but from fertilizers applied now.

Perry, the Farm Bureau and other agricultural groups should connect the dots. It is not the dumping of dirt by the corps that is the problem; it is the over-application of today’s fertilizers. The dead zone is there because of today’s practices and has little or nothing to do with chemicals applied in 1992.

There is one positive aspect. Perry and her ilk have accomplished one thing: Conservation organizations are now allied with the Army Corps of Engineers. Strange bedfellows, strange times.