[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 71 (Wednesday, May 1, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2553-S2554]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Missouri Flooding

  Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, we have been stuck for some time now on 
having an appropriations bill that meets the disasters that have 
occurred recently in Missouri and, before that, in the Carolinas and 
Georgia, and other places. I want to continue to work hard to get that 
done, but I want to talk a little bit about the effects of what has 
happened in the State of Missouri as part of what has happened with 
floods this spring.
  We have seen catastrophic and, in some cases, historic flooding both 
on the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers over the last couple of 
months. Along the Missouri, there was this unusual thing, and I 
actually never heard the term before, a ``bomb cyclone.'' It is a wind 
event that also produced lots of rain in Nebraska in the Northern 
Plains on frozen ground. All of that water had no place to go except 
run off, and it was the equivalent of 8 inches of rain in a place from 
which we usually don't get water. There had been significant rain over 
the last few days of March. That created another flood. On the 
Mississippi, we have seen significant rains there. While they haven't 
set a record, they have certainly consistently ranked the Mississippi 
crests among the seventh highest flood levels that river has ever been 
from some of the locks. There are locks north of St. Louis. You can 
navigate the river without locks south of St. Louis, but in the area 
from the Canton Lock and Dam to the Winfield Lock and Dam on the 
Mississippi, there are significant problems waiting to happen over the 
next few weeks.
  After the rains occurred in Northwest Missouri and in Iowa and 
Nebraska, in our State and Kansas, much of the water is still there. 
The floods have stayed up so high for so long that it is difficult to 
really evaluate the damage that has been done. Unlike a tornado, which 
we have some familiarity with, where you can go in quickly and evaluate 
what happened, you can't do that nearly as quickly with a flood.
  We do know there has been at least $25 million in damages to public 
infrastructure and costs of emergency measures experienced statewide. 
There have been 215 road closures statewide, with 46 roads that 
continue to be closed as late as the third week in April. Interstate 
29, north of St. Joseph, has been closed since March and is expected to 
stay closed until probably June.
  This is obviously a very disruptive set of circumstances for people 
who would normally use those roads and bridges all the time. One of the 
major class 1 roadways has been damaged. That roadway was just raised 
in 2011 to deal with the flood in 2011. An ethanol plant was knocked 
offline. Electric substations have been damaged. Grains stored in bins 
from last year's harvest have been destroyed. Livestock have been lost. 
Many farmers will not be able to get crops in the ground this year 
because it will be too wet once the water goes down--until it is too 
late to successfully plant the crops. So thousands of acres and 
hundreds of farms just simply will not be able to do what they do 
because of the flood.
  The scale and scope of these events has clearly overwhelmed local 
governments, overwhelmed county governments, and stretched the State 
government in a significant way. Most effectively, and most 
importantly, it has impacted families and individuals. If your home is 
underwater, if it takes 2 more hours to get to school, if you have no 
chance of planting your crop or if you are in a business that relates 
to the family who is going to plant the crop, if you have nobody buying 
the seed or paying the repairs for their equipment, paying for the 
gasoline--the things you do to stay in business--that has all kinds of 
impact as well.
  The Governor of Missouri has requested a Presidential disaster 
declaration. I am certainly for that, and every

[[Page S2554]]

Member of the Missouri delegation signed the letter asking the 
President to grant that declaration. The assistance that would be 
impacted by this would be vital. It is important. We need that kind of 
assistance now.
  I am going to continue to work--and I hope all our colleagues 
continue to work--to make this year's disasters and last fall's 
disasters eligible for the funds we appropriate for disaster coverage.
  During the flood, a lot has been said about the Corps of Engineer's 
management of the Missouri River, and what, if anything, they could 
have done that might have prevented the flood this time. I think 
probably not. This is such an unusual flood that the locks on the 
Missouri were north of where the flood occurred. There was a dam that 
broke that would not normally have broken, and that would normally not 
even be part of the Missouri River management system.
  The Corps has been out there trying to help figure out how to recover 
rather than figure out what caused this particular flood. In fact, the 
Corps and the permanent staff in places like the Kansas City office of 
the Corps understand the Missouri River better than anybody, in my 
view, and are helpful when they can be.
  That doesn't mean the Corps, in a greater sense, isn't responsible 
for what has become the new normal on the Missouri River. We have had 
recurrent historic flooding on the river now for 15 years. Ever since 
the Corps asked for a new management plan in 2004 and got the new 
management plan, it just simply doesn't work.
  At least 6 of the top 10 river crests in recorded history have 
occurred in the last 15 years. Floods in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011--you 
see the pattern here--2013, and 2019. The only reason we didn't have 
dramatic floods every year was we had a couple of drought years in 2009 
and 2012.
  This all goes back to that 2004 management plan. What changed in 
2004? In 2004, the Corps started to implement the Missouri River 
Recovery Program in response to a Biological Opinion--``opinion'' may 
be the key word here--Biological Opinion from the U.S. Fish and 
Wildlife Service, which took the position that the existing management 
of the river was impacting one species of fish and two species of 
birds.
  The ultimate result was prioritizing the management of the entire 
river to benefit that fish and those birds. It was above flood control. 
It was above navigation. It didn't consider what was detrimental to 
families, to farms, or the local infrastructure and was not necessary. 
Saving wildlife is a worthy goal, but for that goal to truly be worthy, 
it has to also include how it impacts families, how it impacts people, 
and how it impacts the economy.
  We had management plans on the Mississippi River as well, but the 
wildlife management plans didn't become the plan that substituted for 
all other plans.
  The Corps' management plan brought about changes to the lower river. 
There are six locks and there are six dams, rather, and reservoirs 
above the Lower Missouri that starts roughly in the place where Kansas, 
Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri all come together. What happened was they 
began to destabilize the banks, constructing pallid sturgeon chutes 
that impacted how the water ran into the river. They no longer dredged 
the river like they had before. Just to understand why that matters, a 
9-foot channel of the river carries a lot more water than a 6- or 7-
foot channel of the river. If you are channeling the river so you can 
still navigate the river, they had interception rearing complexes, none 
of which appears to have made much of a difference, except they made it 
hard to control the river at flood stage.
  Modifying or eliminating the river control systems eliminate the 
normal things in a river, such as revetments, wing dikes, and chevrons 
that control the river and send the water in the direction it needs to 
be for flood protection, and that just didn't happen.
  Fish and Wildlife and the Corps of Engineers actually now know that 
some of the actions they were carrying out caused direct negative 
impacts on the river and didn't do any good. There is a high level of 
certainty that when you notch a dike in the river--which means you cut 
a hole in a structure that is designed to channel the water--that when 
you do that, bad things happen. That is why that structure was put 
there in the first place for a reason.
  One of the most disappointing parts of what has happened is a 
relatively low level of certainty that any of these things do any good. 
In fact, the Corps and the Fish and Wildlife people have already 
abandoned the pursuit of what they constructed, pallid sturgeon chutes, 
which they thought would encourage the pallid sturgeon to multiply. By 
the way, this is a fish we happen to multiply ourselves at the Neosho 
National Fish Hatchery, which I believe is the oldest fish hatchery in 
the United States. The U.S. hatchery system is in Neosho. Pallid 
sturgeon is one of the things they do. They didn't work, but they did 
encourage more flood risk.
  I would have one suggestion for the Corps: If you know an action will 
increase flood control and you know it will harm people and harm 
property and you don't know whether it will help save a species, don't 
do it. There has to be a way you figure out first whether this is going 
to work, and then you might evaluate if it is so important that we are 
going to impact people and property.
  What we had is a big experiment that turned out to be the wrong thing 
to do to start with. It didn't serve the purpose, and it did harm the 
river and people who live on the river. Flood control and navigation 
needs to be, once again, elevated to the top two priorities of managing 
the river. I look forward to working with my colleagues to figure out 
how to do this in a better way.

  There is no question that the Mississippi River is about to be more 
important than it has been in 100 years. There is also no reason that 
the Missouri River, as an avenue of commerce and as an avenue that 
people can get near and enjoy from a tourist's and traveler's 
perspective, can't be there, and there is no reason it can't continue 
to be managed in a way that benefits families, that benefits us 
economically, and that doesn't repeat year after year after year the 
flooding that did not occur under the original management plan.
  We need to look at that plan. We need to have a management plan that 
meets the commonsense standard. The current plan does not, and we have 
had now 15 years to prove that the current plan does not meet it. I am 
going to be working hard with both the Corps, the Department of the 
Interior, and Fish and Wildlife to see if we can't have a plan that 
meets that commonsense standard.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, first of all, I thank the Senator from 
Missouri for his comments about the disaster. We are having a disaster 
in the U.S. Senate because we haven't been able to solve our emergency 
problem yet. It is not because of Senator Blunt. He has done a great 
job, as have many Members of the Senate. We are close now, and there is 
a meeting this afternoon with important Senators. We are close on 
Hawaii, on Alaska, on Georgia, on South Carolina, on Tennessee, on 
Alabama, on Florida, and on the other States that have had disasters in 
the past year to which we have still been late on getting disaster 
emergency funds.
  In fact, in Georgia, this is the 222nd day, in the case of one 
emergency, that those funds have been held up. In the agricultural 
season, 222 days is 1\1/2\ plants. It is one planting, one picking, and 
a second planting. So it is a significant part of the agriculture year. 
We are getting killed in Georgia. Our farmers are getting hurt badly 
because of the ineptitude, in part and sometimes in whole, of the U.S. 
Senate.
  Finally, cool heads are coming together. We are getting over some 
arguments, and we are getting some things solved. Thanks to the help of 
Senator Blunt and others in the U.S. Senate, we are going to get help 
to our farmers in Georgia, to those in Alabama, and to those in Alaska 
from the earthquake and to those in Hawaii from the lava flow and the 
eruptions they have had there and from all of the other disasters we 
have had. Finally, that money is going to start flowing.