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Missouri River Coalition prepares farmers for Corps’ hearings

The Coalition to Protect the Missouri River has hosted farmer meetings across the state of Missouri in preparation for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ hearings on the Corps’ Environmental Impact Statement draft.

Coalition leader Dan Engemann tells Brownfield the Corps has proposed six alternatives – several of which involve increasing river flows from Gavins Point in South Dakota that would impact the lower river basin to protect several endangered birds and the pallid sturgeon fish, “Mother Nature typically raises those (spring and fall) flows for us and so you’re talking about shortening the freeboard on levees, impacting interior drainage, and affecting crop production and yields, harvest, planting. So, it’s very important that farmers pay attention to this and be involved.”

Central Missouri farmer Ron Hardecke of Owensville attended Thursday’s meeting at Missouri Farm Bureau headquarters. He tells Brownfield

“I’ve been following the river issues for a long time. I don’t live on the Missouri River but I live on the Bourbese River and I realize that the policy on one water body will affect us all at some point.”

Hardecke, who grows row crops and raises cattle and hogs, says they have enough to contend with because of variable rainfall events – they don’t need the Corps to be flooding them out as well. The preferred alternative would not raise flows for at least nine years.

Public hearings on the Corps plan are February 14th in Omaha, Nebraska, February 15th in Kansas City, Missouri and the 16th in Chesterfield, Missouri.

 

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