USACE Completes EIS on Missouri River Commercial Dredging

Originally pubished by Dredging Today
Feb 21st, 2011
Original Link: http://www.dredgingtoday.com/2011/02/21/usace-completes-eis-on-missouri-river-commercial-dredging-usa/

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has completed the Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on Missouri River Commercial Dredging. This EIS evaluates the potential impacts of private commercial dredging operations seeking USACE authorization to extract sand and gravel from the Missouri River. The Final EIS identifies the Environmentally Preferred Alternative, which would authorize a level of dredging that USACE believes would best protect the biological and physical environment and minimize the negative socioeconomic impacts on the local and regional economy and the sand and gravel industry.



A Notice of Availability will be published in the Federal Register on Feb. 25, 2011. The Final EIS can be viewed and downloaded now at: www.nwk.usace.army.mil/regulatory/Dredging/MO/MOdredging.htm.

USACE Kansas City District Commander Col. Anthony J. Hofmann said, “I will make an honest assessment of potential impacts of the proposed and alternative actions and make a decision that balances the benefits and risks; that strives to meet the needs of the applicants; that protects our nation’s aquatic resources; and that is not contrary to the public interest.”

USACE is required under Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act and Section 404 of the Clean Water Act to regulate dredging and filling activities in waters of the U.S., including the Missouri River.

Under those laws and the National Environmental Policy Act, USACE is required to prepare an EIS that fully evaluates and discloses the potential environmental impacts of proposed permit actions that could result in significant impacts.

USACE has determined the bed of the Missouri River has degraded or lowered a significant amount over the past several decades. The areas that have degraded the most are also the areas where dredging has been most concentrated.

Dredging usually is concentrated around each company’s land based processing, storage and distribution facilities, which generally occur in close geographic proximity to locations where the construction need is greatest. Such cities along the Missouri River include Jefferson City, Kansas City, St. Charles and St. Joseph.

Riverbed degradation can threaten bank stability, erode levee foundations, disable water intake structures and eliminate adjacent wetlands. USACE is conducting a separate degradation feasibility study that will examine the impacts of degradation to federal and non-federal infrastructure and determine potential solutions. This study will examine the causes to the extent necessary to determine future conditions and effectiveness of potential solutions.

The Missouri River has been commercially dredged for at least 70 years to supply sand and gravel for concrete and asphalt used in construction and road building. As the communities along the Missouri River grew, the demand for sand grew, and dredging increased from 250,000 tons per year in 1935 to a peak of nearly 9 million tons in 2002.

With the recent economic downturn, annual extraction decreased to approximately 4.6 million tons in 2009. Under the Environmentally Preferred Alternative identified by USACE in the Final EIS, commercial dredgers would be authorized to continue to extract up to 5,880,000 tons of aggregate per year from the Missouri River for another five years conditioned on spreading dredging operations farther away from the existing land-based facilities. This authorized amount would be divided between the five distinct river segments (St. Joseph, Kansas City, Waverly, Jefferson City and St. Charles segments) identified by the Final EIS.

This approach would allow extraction to increase in the slightly degraded and stable St. Joseph and Waverly segments, keep extraction at the average amount extracted from 2004 to 2008 in the moderately degraded Jefferson City and St. Charles segments, and further reduce extraction in the most heavily dredged and severely degraded segment, Kansas City.

The river bed and water surface elevations would be monitored by USACE during the five-year permit period and reevaluated before the commercial dredging permits could be reauthorized.

Continued bed degradation might warrant additional reduction of authorized dredging limits while bed aggradation might justify increasing authorized dredging limits.

The US Environmental Protection Agency, in Sept. 2010, requested that the USACE consider reducing requested removal amounts due to bed degradation. Click here for related article: http://www.dredgingtoday.com/2010/09/09/usa-epa-objects-to-usaces-dredging-proposals/