By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A huge influx of money to make the Missouri River a more reliable navigation channel has nearly been spent as the Army Corps of Engineers completes repairs and upgrades.
Missouri River Program Manager, Clint Mason, says the Army Corps of Engineers Kansas City office had never seen an allocation as large as the $340 million approved by Congress.
“So our annual budget for operations and maintenance on the river in Kansas City is about $10-11 million,” Mason tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “And so, whenever we get an influx of $340+ million, it was definitely orders of magnitude above what we will get on a normal year. And even more I think than what we’ve seen after past floods and other major events when we’ve had damages.”
The Kansas City office of the Corps of Engineers maintains the Missouri River from Holt County to its mouth in St. Louis.
Mason asserts a lack of maintenance along the Missouri River led directly to damage in wake of the 2011 and 2019 floods. He says the money will bring navigational structures back to their original strength.
Mason points out the Corps’ Kansas City office receives its annual maintenance budget for all the waterways under its management with only a portion designated for the Missouri River.
“But over time, it became evident that that wasn’t, it wasn’t enough to keep all the structures to their full criteria,” according to Mason. “The rock breaks down with freeze, thaw. High, full events will push the rock or move it off of their structures, things like that. Over time, those rock structures require continual upkeep and maintenance.”
Upgrades along the Missouri River has made it a more reliable transportation source, which has led to more barge traffic from Sioux City, Iowa to St. Louis. Mason says the Corps expects even more barge traffic on the Missouri in the future.
“Right now, I think we’re seeing a resurgence of navigation now that we’ve made the repairs over the last two years and I mentioned during low water even the last couple of years the channel has remained open and navigable the entire time,” Mason says.
Mason says the Corps has observed more navigation this year.
“I think that we’re seeing more navigation on the river than we have in the last, certainly, five, 10 years.”
There are 5,000 navigational structures on the lower Missouri River.
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