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More press is covering the new Big Price – Little Benefit report released by Prairie Rivers Network and partners condemning proposed expansion locks along the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers.
Read press coverage from the Daily-Journal.com by seraching on “Prairie Rivers Network.”
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Yesterday, Prairie Rivers Network and our partners in the Nicollet Island Coalition released a report condemning proposed expansion of 7 of the 29 locks that aid navigation along the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers got Congressional authorization in 2007 to double the size of the locks, at a potential cost to taxpayers of $2.2 billion. Our report shows that the modest benefits the project aims to achieve can be achieved much more cheaply through other means. View our press release here. Download the Big Price – Little Benefit report here.
Tri-States Public Radio (Macomb, IL) covered the story.
The toll on river health of the Corps-maintained navigation system on the Upper Mississippi River is tremendous – the 29 locks and dams have altered the free-flowing and dynamic river between Minneapolis and St. Louis into a static series of enormous, homogeneous reservoirs. {Continue Reading »}
Federal agencies will hold a public hearing today (Friday, February 12) on Asian carp in Chicago, from 3-6pm. The Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee will discuss plans and get recommendations on Asian carp control efforts. The committee will answer questions and listen to comments from the public.
Prairie Rivers Network staffer Traci Barkley and board member Clark Bullard will be there in person to urge the committee to act quickly to stop the spread of Asian carp and other invaders between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River systems. They will also be arguing against serious consideration of a proposal to stop the spread of carp by creating a toxic zone in the Chicago shipping canals with pollution from sewage treatment plants and industrial facilities.
The meeting also will be available via live web stream at: http://www.epa.gov/greatlakes/live
Those who cannot attend the meeting in person can submit questions on the website.
Visit PRN’s Asian carp posts for background information.
Proposed site for STAR bonds development in American Bottom floodplain.
Described variously as “TIF on steroids” or “Worst Bill Ever,” Illinois Senate Bill 1909 – the STAR Bonds Financing Act – gives money to private developers at Illinois state taxpayers’ expense to develop in the 100-year floodplain because “such sites are more likely to remain underutilized and undeveloped.” Eligible sites must be vacant and no less than 600 acres, at least 30 per cent of which is in the 100-year floodplain.
The Corps of Engineers section of Title IV of S. 336, the Senate Economic Stimulus legislation, includes a terrible precedent by waiving all existing cost-sharing requirements for construction of Army Corps of Engineers Inland Waterways projects. Such a waiver would reverse 23 years of national policy set in the landmark 1986 Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) that the nation’s barge companies are required contribute 50 percent of costs of new construction or major rehabilitation of inland waterway locks, dams or channels. {Continue Reading »}
The Upper Mississippi Eduction Program held its fourth successful field trip for 60 Illinois high school students. Students started the day with a tour of the dam at the Melvin Price Locks & Dam/National Great Rivers Museum and then participated in a Team Building exercise. The afternoon was spent at Principia College in Jersey County, Illinois, where the students worked together to develop possible solutions to some of the UMR’s most difficult environmental problems with the assistance of local river experts and college student facilitators.
Some of the creative solutions that the students came up with to deal with the Asian Carp issue included using a combination of biological or chemical controls, community fishing contests up and down the river on certain days and developing processing plants for animal feed or export. After the session students toured the campus UMR overlook.
View photos from the trip.