GOING AGAINST THE FLOW: ONE MAN'S FIGHT TO KEEP THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER ON ITS COURSE EARNS HIM AN INTERNATIONAL DISTINCTION

The course of the Mississippi River is a constant from generation to generation, a fact of life used to decide where to plant crops and build homes.

But the river current is a powerful force, and erosion can change the Mississippi's flow.

That force threatened Cape Girardeau agriculture consultant Lester Goodin's land at Thompson Bend, a stretch of river that, on the map, appears to rival the most nerve-racking Ozark road.

Those curves near Illinois' most southern point are important to river navigation, slowing the current and allowing barges to travel upstream from Cairo, Ill. But Thompson Bend, a 10,000-acre peninsula just above the Mississippi's confluence with the Ohio, is a mere mile-and-a-half at its most narrow point. The river threatened to cut straight through, turning the bend into an island.

If that happened, the new channel would have a major impact on both navigation and flood protection.

"It would be catastrophic," Goodin said. "It would just about wipe out river traffic on the river north of Cairo."

So Goodin and Jerry Rapp, lead engineer for the St. Louis District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, set out to do something about it. They wanted the solution to be environmentally friendly but effective.

Their answer worked. And last month in Las Vegas, the two were recognized for their work and presented the 2001 Environmental Achievement Award of Distinction by the International Erosion Control Association.

Goodin, who is president of the Thompson Bend Soil Conservation Association, and Rapp teamed up with a group of Missouri landowners to create a new erosion control project along the 12-mile stretch of the Mississippi River.

It is the largest project of its kind in the nation and, according to the IECA, demonstrates that navigation can be maintained on a large, complex river system in an environmentally sensitive way. Rapp and Goodin used trees -- including the pecan, cottonwood and hackberry varieties -- instead of conventional, man-made structures to control erosion on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River just north of Cairo, Ill. They called it the Dry Bayou/Thompson Bend Riparian Corridor Project.

The tendency of a flooding Mississippi is to try and cut through the bend's narrow neck, said Goodin, "especially if the river is rushing down to a low Ohio River just a few miles downstream."

By the early 1980s, the Mississippi River was threatening to create such a cutoff, said Goodin, a Mississippi County, Mo., native who was farming land in the Thompson Bend area. Traditional erosion prevention, such as stacking boulders on the shoreline, didn't help.

In 1986, Goodin and Rapp met with officials from the Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Westvaco Lumber Co. and area farmers to determine how to strengthen the bend's defenses.

"We didn't know what we were going to do," Goodin said.

The corps and landowners eventually planted 150 acres of trees perpendicular to flow lines across the area to slow the erosive force of floodwaters and to encourage deposits of sediment carried by the river.

Severe flooding in 1993 proved the effectiveness of this approach. The tree screen cut water velocities. And, although some of the trees bent over and later died, their roots held the soil in place.

Following the 1993 flood, the corps, local officials and farmers continued to develop the Thompson Bend project, restoring the tree screens and expanding the area covered.

The corps is in the process of purchasing easements and will plant new trees and maintain them initially, and landowners will retain the timber rights.

The total project will vary from 300 feet to a mile wide in some critical areas. More than 300,000 trees of various species will be planted.

The project cost still is less than traditional structures.

The IECA, founded in 1972, is a non-profit professional organization with members in 56 countries around the world, who are dedicated to minimizing accelerated soil erosion.