By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Midwest members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat, are asking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to make flood control its priority in managing the Missouri River.
Northern Missouri Congressman Sam Graves is among those asking the Corps of follow the priority set out in the Water Resources Development Act passed by Congress.
“The fact that we actually have to push the Corps to implement the law that is in place just gives you a little bit of an insight into to just how autonomous the Corps of Engineers can be when it comes to management,” Graves tells host Barry Birr on the KFEQ Hotline.
Graves says the Corps has failed to make flood control or navigation its top priority in managing the Missouri.
Republican and Democratic members of Congress from Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa have signed a letter formally requesting the Corps to make flood control its top priority. The move comes as the Corps nears completion of repairs to levees broken by the 2019 Missouri River flood.
Graves says the Corps’ failure to make flood control its top priority in managing the Missouri River is a real problem.
“Because it’s affecting communities and power plants and businesses and farms and people’s lives and everything that goes along with it,” according to Graves.
Graves says the delegation has asked the Corps to simply follow federal law as outlined in the Water Resources Development Act passed by Congress, which calls for flood control to be the main priority in managing seven upstream reservoirs which control the flow of the Missouri River.
Graves says the Corps is pulled in too many directions when it comes to management of the Missouri River with several federal agencies making demands on how the Corps manages the Missouri.
“I don’t think they can manage it based on so many priorities,” Graves says. “When you’re looking at the tourism industry and the recreational industry up north and then the habitat and a lot of that is dictated, too, by the Endangered Species Act.”
Still, Graves says the Corps must follow federal law.
U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.), along with U.S. Representatives Sam Graves (Mo.) and Emanuel Cleaver II (Mo.), led a bipartisan, bicameral letter urging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to quickly and fully utilize the tools and resources Congress provided in the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2020 and the FY2020 Energy and Water appropriations bill to reduce flood risk and improve flood protection along the Lower Missouri River.
In addition to Blunt, Graves, and Cleaver, the letter is signed by congressional members from the Lower Missouri River Basin states, including U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Deb Fischer (Neb.), Roger Marshall (Kan.), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Josh Hawley (Mo.), and Jerry Moran (Kan.) and U.S. Representatives Blaine Luetkemeyer (Mo.), Adrian Smith (Neb.), Vicky Hartzler (Mo.), Ann Wagner (Mo.), Jake LaTurner (Kan.), Billy Long (Mo.), Jason Smith (Mo.), Sharice Davids (Kan.), and Cindy Axne (Iowa).
