REVIEW OF THE U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS Restructured Upper Mississippi River–Illinois Waterway FEASIBILITY STUDY
Second Report
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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
This study was supported by Contract No. DACW72-03-C-0003 between the National Academy of Sciences and the Department of the Army. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organizations or agencies that provided support for the project.
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Cover design by Michael Dudzik, National Academies Press. Cover photograph, Ten Brook, 1885 by Henry Peter Bosse, reproduced with permission from the Mayo Foundation. Back cover photograph, Snagging Scene, 1885 by Henry Peter Bosse, reproduced courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Photographs taken from Views on the Mississippi, the Photographs of Henry Peter Bosse, reproduced with permission from University of Minnesota Press.
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COMMITTEE TO REVIEW THE CORPS OF ENGINEERS RESTRUCTURED UPPER MISSISSIPPI RIVER-ILLINOIS WATERWAY DRAFT FEASIBILITY STUDY1
JOHN J. BOLAND, Chair,
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
PATRICK BREZONIK,
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
ROBERT K. DAVIS,
University of Colorado, Boulder (retired)
LEO M. EISEL,
Brown and Caldwell, Golden, Colorado
STEPHEN W. FULLER,
Texas A&M University, College Station
GERALD E. GALLOWAY,
Titan Corporation, Fairfax, Virginia
LESTER B. LAVE,
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
KARIN LIMBURG,
Syracuse University, New York
ELIZABETH A. RIEKE,
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Carson City, Nevada
SOROOSH SOROOSHIAN,
University of California, Irvine
RICHARD E. SPARKS,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
NRC Staff
JEFFREY W. JACOBS, Study Director,
Water Science and Technology Board
JOSEPH MORRIS, Senior Staff Officer,
Transportation Research Board
ANITA A. HALL, Program Associate,
Water Science and Technology Board
Editor
FLORENCE POILLON
Preface
The Mississippi is well worth reading about. It is not a commonplace river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable.
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 1863
As an ecological and economic resource of enormous size and inestimable value, the Upper Mississippi River remains as remarkable today as it was in Mark Twain's time. The Illinois Waterway is also extraordinary in its own way, beginning with the late nineteenth century engineering feat of reversing the Chicago River’s direction of flow. Four other rivers were then interconnected to form a navigation channel that extends from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River at Grafton, Illinois, thus creating a hydrologic connection between the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. Attempts to facilitate commercial navigation on these waters have occupied the federal government since the 1820s, growing ever more challenging as the number and severity of resource conflicts increased. However, this task became even more difficult in 2001 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decided to simultaneously address navigation improvements and the ecological degradation that has accompanied Mississippi and Illinois River lock and dam construction and operations. This decision resulted in the Corps issuing its Restructured Upper Mississippi-Illinois Waterway System Navigation Feasibility Study, which proposed an integrated plan for navigation improvements and ecosystem restoration (the first interim report of the Corps’ restructured study was issued in July 2002; USACE, 2002).
In March 2003, the Corps of Engineers requested that the National Research Council (NRC) convene a committee to review the restructured study. Our committee was formed in the summer of 2003 and met for the first time in September of that year. Our first report consisted of a review of the 2002 study and information gathered at our first meeting (September 2003), and was issued early in 2004 (NRC, 2004a). Our committee held three meetings after that first report was issued. A draft integrated feasibility report was published by the Corps on April 29, 2004 (USACE, 2004). This report presents the results of our committee’s review of that feasibility
report. Our committee is also scheduled to produce a third report in 2005.
It is important to note that both the Corps’ study and this committee have immediate predecessors. In the late 1990s, the Corps was occupied with a major study of navigation improvements on these same waterways. That effort, however, was directed to a single purpose (navigation) and did not include an ecosystem restoration component. Just as the study was nearing completion, controversy erupted on several fronts. In response to public criticism, the Department of Defense requested the National Research Council to review the ongoing study. That committee completed its work in a single report issued early in 2001 (NRC, 2001). In response to that report and to other criticisms, the Chief of Engineers temporarily paused the navigation study until it could be replaced by the broader and more complex restructured study, which is discussed herein. Because of this history, we refer to the 2000-2001 NRC committee as the “Phase I” committee and to our present committee as the “Phase II” committee. Except for the Phase I committee chair (Lester Lave), this Phase II committee has no members that served on the Phase I committee.
The Phase I committee made several recommendations that were influential in the Corps’ restructuring of the study. Other recommendations, however, were not acted on or were only partially considered. As the Phase II committee began its study, we carefully examined each of the Phase I recommendations and found none with which we disagreed. In fact, some Phase I findings and recommendations are repeated in this report. Readers of this report should be aware that this committee continues to support all of the recommendations in the Phase I report, whether mentioned here or not.
In preparing its second report, the Phase II committee met with and heard from a variety of interested parties in three public meetings. In St. Louis in December 2003, those guests were Richard Astrack of the Corps of Engineers (St. Louis); Michael Babcock of Kansas State University; John Chick of the Great Rivers Field Station (Brighton, Ill.); Michael Dyer of the U.S. Department of Transportation Volpe Center (Cambridge, Mass.); Commander Suzanne Engelbert of the U.S. Coast Guard (St. Louis); D. Demcey Johnson of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (Washington, D.C.); Bruce Scherr, Donald Frahm, and Kenneth Erickson of Sparks Companies, Inc. (Memphis, Tenn.); and Royce Wilken of Archer Daniels Midland (Decatur, Ill.). In Irvine, California, in February 2004, our guests included several Corps of Engineers staff. Kenneth Barr, Denny Lundberg, and Richard Manguno in particular helped update the committee on changes and progress within the feasibility study in an informative afternoon session. In Red Wing, Minnesota, in May 2004, our guests were John Beghin of Iowa State University; Mark Boerkrem of the Illinois Steward-
ship Alliance (Rochester, Il.); and Dan McGuiness of Audubon (Woodbury, Minn.), as well as several Corps of Engineers staff, including Brigadier General Don T. Riley, Kenneth Barr, Denny Lundberg, and Richard Manguno. At all three meetings, these individuals gave their time generously and were patient in speaking with our committee and in responding to a wide variety of questions. The importance of their contributions to enhancing our understanding of the feasibility study and key management issues on the Upper Mississippi River-Illinois Waterway cannot be overstated, and we sincerely thank all of them for taking time from their busy schedules to assist us.
In negotiating a daunting stack of printed material, our review was facilitated by the lucid and comprehensive presentations by members of the Corps study team. These individuals include the study project manager Denny Lundberg, along with Kenneth Barr, Richard Manguno, Jeffrey Stamper, and many others. We are particularly grateful for a working relationship with the Corps that was uniformly helpful, professional, and open to candid exchange of views. For this, we greatly thank Brigadier General Don T. Riley, who set the tone for the entire relationship. We also thank Colonel Duane Gapinski, William Dawson, Richard Worthington, and the members of the Corps study team.
This report was reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise in accordance with the procedures approved by the NRC’s Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We thank the following individuals for their review of this report: John C. Beghin, Iowa State University; Michael S. Bronzini, George Mason University; Kenneth L. Casavant, Washington State University; Stanley A. Changnon, University of Illinois, James R. Hanchey, State of Louisiana Department of Natural Resources; Rachel Muir, U.S. Geological Survey; Doug Plasencia, AMEC; Paul M. Schonfeld, University of Maryland; Jack A. Stanford, University of Montana; Frank H. Stillinger, Princeton University; and James L. Wescoat, Jr., University of Illinois.
Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations, nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was overseen by Walter R. Lynn, Cornell University, who was appointed by the Division on Earth and Life Studies and by Charles E. Phelps, University of Rochester, who was appointed by
the NRC’s Report Review Committee. Drs. Lynn and Phelps were responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of this report rests entirely with the authoring committee and the institution.
NRC committees are comprised of talented and busy scientists, engineers, and other experts. Given that the volunteers on our committee, like all NRC committee members, have “day jobs” and serve on these committees without compensation, it is remarkable how much time and attention each member has devoted to this study. Yet no matter how committed and energetic the committee members may be, much of the hard work of planning meetings, maintaining communications, and assembling, editing, and writing our reports falls upon the NRC staff officers assigned to the committee. In this case, Study Director Jeffrey Jacobs of the NRC Water Science and Technology Board has been extraordinarily effective in handling an unusually large workload on a compressed schedule. Jeff was ably backed up by Senior Staff Officer Joseph Morris of the NRC Transportation Research Board. Anita Hall of the Water Science and Technology Board helped arrange meeting logistics, travel, and many other duties. Florence Poillon provided excellent editorial assistance in the preparation of this report’s final version. Finally, Stephen Parker, director of the Water Science and Technology Board, and Steve Godwin, director of the Transportation Research Board’s Policy Division, provided steady overall guidance and input. We thank them all.
John J. Boland, Chair