URBANA, Ill. — A recently released University of Illinois study examines the history of the Missouri River, damages and changes from the 2011 flood and its current condition, which concluded the river needs a comprehensive plan with multistate cooperation.

 

“Flooding – particularly near infrastructures, residences and cropland – can be extremely destructive,” said Dr. Ken Olson, a researcher in U of I’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES).

“We see it again and again, and continue to observe the damaging effects to the river and surrounding landscape from the 2011 flood – erosion and sedimentation," he added.

The study pointed out as the Missouri River flows across the Great Plains to where it meets the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Mo., it accumulates such a large sediment load that it has earned the nickname “Big Muddy.”

Partial support for this research was provided by the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station, ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, in cooperation with North-Central Regional Project No.1190, Catalysts for Water Resource Protection and Restoration: Applied Social Science Research and from ACES.

Olson said he and his colleague, Dr. Lois Wright Morton, Iowa State University professor emeritus of sociology, have studied the seasonal Mississippi River and tributary flooding for more than a decade, co-authoring the book Managing Mississippi and Ohio River Landscapes.

“There is a lot of interest in this topic,” he said. Entitled “Sedimentation, Navigation and Agriculture on the Lower Missouri River,” the study appears in the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation. In the study, Olson said “such a plan (to address both the upper Mississippi and Missouri river flooding and navigation issues) is possible if the northern states adjacent to the Missouri and Mississippi rivers are willing to contribute and participate in the development of the management plan.”

The states are Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado; so far, he said Illinois, Iowa and Missouri are on board. “These states have suffered levee breaches during the 2008, 2011, 2016 and 2017 flooding events,” he said.

In their book, Olson and Wright Morton specifically recommend federal government agencies – the Mississippi River Commission (MRC), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which has the federal mandate to manage the Great Rivers of the United States and tributaries, and the USDA and the Natural Resource Conservation Service – sign an agreement to update the soil survey after every levee breach and subsequent flooding event, which he said would include a soil damage assessment. “So far, that has not happened, but there has been some discussion,” he added.

Olson said the Missouri and its tributaries are dynamic and continually changing, moving coarse stones, gravel, sand and silt. “Its power caves in stream banks and erodes river islands, and re-deposits them further downstream,” he said. “When the river overflows its banks, it carries the soils from the floodplain and eroded upland agricultural soils downstream, creating sand dunes, mud flats and deltas.

“Dams on Missouri River tributaries have changed rural livelihoods and the economics of the basin by reducing downstream flooding, generating hydroelectric power and irrigating agricultural crops,” he noted.

He said six dams, built in the 1940s and ’60s on the main stem of the Missouri River, couldn’t control flooding in 2011. “There is a need for the Mississippi River Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to develop a Missouri River and upper Mississippi River plan similar to their lower Mississippi River and tributary plan to address both the upper Mississippi and Missouri river flooding and navigation issues,” he said.

Olson said Wright Morton suggested four key elements are foundational to constructing a civic structure capable of realizing system level goals: a common vision; iterative exchanges of knowledge and perspectives; public and private collaborative partnerships in the public interest; and processes and mechanisms that integrate and use scientific and non-scientific knowledge in priority setting and mobilization of resources to accomplish the shared vision.

Olson suggested the MRC and the USACE are well positioned to provide the mission-vision leadership and develop mechanisms and processes for integration of scientific and non-scientific knowledge.

“River management requires communication, cooperation, coordination and joint investments across many federal and state public agencies, local municipalities, levee and soil and water districts, private organizations and individual landowners and managers,” he said.

“Thus, as a public agency they cannot singlehandedly develop the vision nor carry it alone. However, the federally mandated annual high and low water public hearings conducted by the USACE and the Mississippi River Commission are critical forums which provide neutral space for public dialogue, learning and listening exchanges on river issues.”