St. Johns Bayou project finally gets OK

Initial construction on the long-delayed and controversial St. Johns Bayou-New Madrid Floodway project could begin around the end of the year, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson said Tuesday.

Last week, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, the Missouri Attorney General's office and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reached an agreement that will allow the $85 million project to proceed. It will close a 1,500-foot gap in the levee near New Madrid that allows the Mississippi River to flood thousands of acres of farmland. Last year, nearly 49,000 acres of crops were lost.

When the Mississippi floods, backwaters sometimes isolate the small Mississippi County village of Pinhook and nearly surround the larger town of East Prairie.

Environmentalists have argued that the project will eliminate 18,000 wetland acres in the floodplain and threatens Big Oak Tree State Park.

The corps has been planning on the project for the past 16 years. Last year the DNR refused to certify the project because the two federal agencies involved -- the corps and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- could not agree on the environmental impacts.

Under the settlement, the DNR is requiring the corps to monitor the project for five years and to provide remedies if problems arise. The DNR still is worried that the amount of mitigation the corps is providing -- 8,500 acres -- is too little. The concern is that the corps' mitigation models won't cover all the environmental impacts.

"We decided to accept the corps' assumptions provided they agree to do monitoring as it unfolds," said Scott Toten, director of the Water Protection and Soil Conservation Division of the DNR.

He said the corps would be required to provide more mitigation if the monitoring shows more environmental impacts than predicted.

Ted Heisel, law and policy coordinator for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, charges that monitoring the environmental effects is far from preventing them. "They're just pushing the problem off into the future. By that point in time the damage will have been done," he said.

On Tuesday, Toten said the monitoring plan must be approved by DNR before the project can proceed.

The corps also must construct a levee to protect the park and a pipe to bring river water into the park.

Environmental groups have 30 days to file appeals with the state Water Quality Board.

"We are very disappointed in the settlement," Heisel said.

It provides few changes from the corps' original proposal, he maintains. "There is no change to reduce the impact on the environment and only very minor changes made on mitigations."

Heisel questions the corps' plan to leave the levee gates open up to certain river elevations to allow fish into the bayou to spawn and feed. "The gates are going to be open only a few days of the year. The main goal is to dry the area out. They are not going to leave the gates open when fish need to get out in the floodplain," he said.

"... The notion that fish are still going to use this area is wrong."

The national conservation group Environmental Defense also has said it will appeal the DNR certification.

The corps had appealed the DNR's original decision to deny certification for the project. The administrative hearing officer is expected to accept the corps' withdrawal of its appeal later this month.

"At some point late this year or early next year we could have a water project on the street," says Lloyd Smith, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

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