President Clinton Asked To Review Massive Wetland Drainage

Six of the nation’s largest environmental organizations today asked President Clinton to review three Army Corps of Engineers projects on the lower Mississippi River that would drain 100,000 to 200,000 acres of wetlands. The authorized projects, designed to increase production of corn and soybeans, would cost federal taxpayers roughly $300 million.

In a letter signed by the heads of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), American Rivers, Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, Izaac Walton League, National Wildlife Federation, and the Sierra Club, the groups question whether these projects are compatible with the President’s Clean Water Action plan which attempts to create a net increase in wetlands of 100,000 acres per year.

“Why should taxpayers pay $300 million to drain wetlands to increase production of crops when the federal government is spending $2 billion a year under a different program to do just the opposite — to get farmers to halt overproduction of crops in the face of falling prices by turning farmland back into wetlands?” said Tim Searchinger, an EDF attorney.

The three projects would use pumps, drainage channels and levees to drain the St. Johns Bayou and New Madrid Floodway areas in Missouri, and the Yazoo Basin and Big Sunflower River in Mississippi. The original project planning documents sent to Congress estimated only a few hundred or at most a few thousand acres of wetland impacts. But a new draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Missouri project estimates that it alone would drain 36,000 acres of wetlands, and new data available for the Yazoo Pump indicate that it would impact more than 100,000 acres.

Normal requirements that local beneficiaries pay for at least 25% of the costs of the projects were waived for all three projects.

The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has filed suit to block construction of the Big Sunflower Maintenance dredging project. “The time has come to convert the Corps of Engineers from a destroyer of nature to one of its major restorers,” said NWF president Mark Van Putten. “We cannot tell America that the Corps will fix its mistakes in places like the Everglades if it keeps making the same errors in the Delta.”

“The Corps of Engineers has helped drain 95% of the wetlands along the Mississippi River. That makes the remainder even more critical for migrating ducks and geese and the river’s once staggering fisheries,” said Paul Hansen, Executive Director of the Izaac Walton League.