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S. Hrg. 103-421 REVIEW OF THE MISSOURI RIVER MASTER WATER CONTROL MANUAL ' Y 4. P 96/10: S. HRG. 103-421 Revieu of the Nissouri River llaster... HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED THIRD CONGRESS FIRST SESSION OCTOBER 11, 1993—GLENDIVE, MONTANA Printed for the use of the Committee on Environment and Public Works APif 1 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 73-692 WASHINGTON : 1994 ForsalebytheU.S.GovernmentPrintingOffice SuperintendentofDocuments,CongressionalSalesOffice,Washington,DC 20402 ISBN 0-16-043641-9 . \\ / S. Hrg. 103-421 \V3 REVIEW OF THE MISSOURI RIVER MASTER WATER CONTROL MANUAL Y 4. P 96/10: S. HRG, 103-421 Revieu of the nissouri River Master. . HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED THIRD CONGRESS FIRST SESSION OCTOBER 11, 1993—GLENDIVE, MONTANA Printed for the use of the Committee on Environment and Public Works APii / U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 73-692 WASHINGTON : 1994 ForsalebytheU.S.GovernmentPrintingOffice SuperintendentofDocuments,CongressionalSalesOffice,Washington,DC 20402 ISBN 0-16-043641-9 COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS MAX BAUCUS, Montana, Chairman DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN, New York JOHN H. CHAFEE, Rhode Island GEORGE J. MITCHELL, Maine ALAN K. SIMPSON, Wyoming FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey DAVE DURENBERGER, Minnesota HARRY REID, Nevada JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia BOB GRAHAM, Florida ROBERT SMITH, New Hampshire JHOOSWEAPRHDI.ML.IMEEBTEZRMEANNB,AUCMon,neOchtiicout LDIARUKCHKEFMAPITRHCLOORTNHE,,NIodrathhoCarolina HARRIS WOFFORD, Pennsylvania BARBARA BOXER, California Peter L. Scher, StaffDirector Steven J. Shimberg, Minority StaffDirector and ChiefCounsel (II) CONTENTS OPENING STATEMENTS Page Baucus, Hon. Max, U.S. Senatorfrom the State ofMontana 1 Conrad, Hon. Kent, U.S. Senatorfrom the State ofNorth Dakota 3 WITNESSES Brandt, Diane, ChamberofCommerce, Glasgow, Montana 32 Prepared statement 97 DufFus, James, III, Director, Natural Resources Management Issues, Re- sources, Community, and Economic Development Division, General Ac- countingOffice 5 Harris, Bill, Owner, Crooked Creek Marina, Winnett, Montana 45 Huffman, Don,Vice President, PhoenixTowing Co 35 Lamb, John, Executive Director, Walleyes Unlimited ofMontana 47 Prepared statement 100 Pfau, Don, Chairman, Fort PeckAdvisory Council 34 Reimche, Gene C, County Commissioner, Valley County, Montana 31 Prepared statement 93 Roberts, Robert, Secretary, South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources 12 Prepared statement 88 Schaufelberger, Col. John E., Division Engineer, Omaha Division, Corps of Engineers 7 Prepared statement 56 Simonich, Mark, Director, Department of Natural Resources, State of Mon- tana 8 Prepared statement 72 Sprynczynatyk, David A., State Engineer, North Dakota State Water Com- mission 10 Prepared statement 77 Letterto SenatorBaucus 86 TakenAlive,Jesse, Chairman, StandingRock SiouxTribe 50 Prepared statement 102 Wright, Daryl, Executive Director, Mni-Sose Intertribal Water Rights Coali- tion 48 ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD Brakss,John, President, Spring Creek Resort, Inc 106 Brown, J. Edward, StateWaterCoordinator, StateofIowa 117 Casterline, Keith 133 Dinius, Duane 134 Gehnert, Art, President, Rock Creek CabinAssociation 136 Link, ArthurA 137 Mills, WiUiam R 139 Oglala SiouxTribe 144 Wagner, Craig, Safety Director,Williston BasinInterstate Pipeline Co 179 Wiers, FrankR 180 (III) REVIEW OF THE MISSOURI RIVER MASTER WATER CONTROL MANUAL MONDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1993 U.S. Senate, Committee on Environment and Public Works, Glendive, MT. The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 8:40 a.m. in the Petro- leum Room, Holiday Lodge, 223 North Merrill, Glendive, Montana, Hon. Max Baucus (chairman ofthe committee) presiding. Present. Senator Baucus. Also present. Senator Conrad. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MAXBAUCUS, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MONTANA Senator Baucus. Good morning, everybody. I first want to welcome all ofyou to today's hearing on the review of the Army Corps of Engineers Missouri River Master Manual, a topic that is near and dear to our hearts for a good number of years, particularly during the drought years. I very much appreciate all ofyou coming. I know we have many friends here from North Dakota and South D^ota, as well, since this is a problem for all ofus together in the Upper Missouri River Basin. I am also very happy to be joined by one of my colleagues and one of our good friends, our neighbor to the east. Senator Kent We Conrad from North Dakota. Kent is a very good friend ofmine. are allies together in most everything that we work on in the Sen- ate because our interests in North Dakota and Montana are so similar. Kent is also a real fighter. I don't know anybody in the Senate who digs deeper or is more tenacious for North Dakota than any other Senator for his or own State, than Kent Conrad. So let's give a big Big Sky welcome to Kent Conrad. [Applause.] Senator Baucus. I would like to open this hearing with a trip back through time. The date is the early 1930's. The place is Fort Peck, a small trading post and military telegraph station. Widespread unemployment and economic devastation from the Great Depression plagued the people of eastern Montana. Some of you here will remember that or have vivid recollections of it. Jobs were scarce. Economic prosperity was a distant dream. But all that was to change: the wild Missouri was about to be tamed. The Fed- eral Government wanted to harness the power of the Big Muddy, to stop its unpredictable flooding, and to control its wanderings across the great west. (1) The news ofthe construction ofFort Peck Dam swept throughout eastern Montana. There were many promises made by the Federal Government: thousands ofjobs for local workers; economic prosperity for eastern Montana; large irrigation projects for farmers; cheap hydropower for the region, and flood control. But everything has its price. In Montana, we gave up over 167,000 acres of land in six counties for Fort Peck Dam and Res- ervoir. Add in the Dakotas, and the upper basin States gave up 1.2 million acres of prime river bottom land for the reservoirs and dams, and local governments gave up the tax base associated with the land. But we trusted the Grovernment's promise that we would share in the economic benefits ofthe Missouri River reservoir system. On October 3, 1937, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stood on the shore of the Missouri River at Fort Peck, in the shadow of the massive scaffolding from the construction of Fort Peck Dam, just four years after construction. He looked out over the faces of over 20,000 Montanans who had traveled hundreds ofmiles to hear him speak. Here is what President Roosevelt said: The Nation has understood thatwe arebuilding forfuturegenerations ofourchil- dren and grandchildren, and that in the greater part of what we have done, the money spent is an investment which will come back a thousand-fold in the coming years. Now, 56 years later, we are still looking for these investments to pay off. Before this year's rains, five years of drought have crippled the Missouri River basin. Fort Peck and the other upper basin lakes haAvse btheiesnpbilcetdurteo—s^uypopuorctandosweensittroevaemr bhearreg,eotnrafmfiyc.right—taken at Fort Peck marina shows, newly constructed boat ramps led down to weedy fields, miles away from the water of the lake. This looks good if you compare it with Crooked Creek, where it's even worse. The large irrigation projects promised to the farmers back in the 1930's have since been deauthorized and never built. Time and again, when money is given out to improve recreational areas. Fort Peck has been left out. But things are finally starting to turn around. Record rainfall and runoff this year have helped to almost fill Fort Peck, Oahe, and Sakakawea. At my request, funds from the Army Corps have been used to pave the marina road at Fort Peck. A Memorandum of Agreement among the Corps, BLM, and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is almost finished, which will help to provide long-term management at the Hell Creek recreation area near Jordan. With hard work and persistence, the people of eastern Montana are finally starting to see some of the promised economic benefits of which President Roosevelt spoke. As Ken Byerly ofthe Lewiston News Argus has written, "Solving this problem is like eating an elephant: you take it one bite at a time." Well, we've taken a few bites, but there's still plenty of elephant left in the deep freeze. As you will hear today, the Corps has been managing the Mis- souri River basin based on outdated economic assumptions from the 1940's. Economic benefits from recreation, tourism, fish, and wildlife have been ignored when making water management deci- sions. It is time for a change. It is time to take a fresh look at the Mis- souri River basin not as a series of isolated dams and reservoirs, but as a w—hole, integrated, multipurpose system. And it is time- high time for the Corps to fully recognize the social and economic value ofrecreation on this great river. That is why we are here today, to listen to all of you from the area, for you to tell us what your experiences and opi—nions are about the Missouri River, what she means to all of you not only economically, but personally. We are going to ask the Corps some tough questions about its management of the reservoir system and we expect straightforward answers. I want to make sure that FDR's promise of rewards to future generations has not been for- gotten. I would like to turn to our friend Senator Conrad. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. KENT CONRAD, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF NORTH DAKOTA Senator CONEAD. Thank you very much. Senator Baucus. Let me just echo what Senator Baucus said with respect to our being allies. I can remember very well when we teamed up to hold up the nomination of a new head ofthe Corps of Engineers several years ago in order to get fair treatment for the upstream States. That set off quite a controversy in the Senate chamber, that we were holding up for days, weeks, and ultimately months, a nomination to so important a post. But one thing we have learned is that if the upper basin States are to get fair treatment, sometimes we must take very hard ac- tion. That is the reality. The downstream States have the numbers; they have the larger populations; they have more Representatives in the House ofRepresentatives and the United States Senate than do the upstream States. So for us just to get fair treatment, what we legitimately deserve to receive based on the facts, takes vigilance and a willingness to act. I am very pleased to be here today with Senator Baucus, who has demonstrated both ofthose qualities, vigilance and a willingness to act. Frankly, sometimes you have to be downright "Montana stub- bom" in order to get the Corps' attention. Some of us in North Da- kota have a little bit of that streak of stubbornness too, which I think has proved valuable in this fight. Let mejust say to you that four years ago I held similar hearings in the State of North Dakota, and if you go back four years ago, all of you will remember the conditions that we faced at the time. We were confronting the worst drought since the 1930's. All across North D—akota, fields were drying up; the reservoir was being drained it was down, first 8 feet, then 12 feet, then 16 feet, then 20 feet. And when I held my first hearing, I must say, you could have bowled me over when I learned that during the depths of the worst drought in 40 years, we were having the Corps make the biggest releases from that reservoir in eight or nine years. It didn't make any sense. It didn't make any sense at all. But the Corps was functioning according to the requirements of the Master Manual. We knew then, as we know now, that that Master Manual is badly out of date. That Master Manual assumes that we were going to have a time when there would be 12 million tons of barge traffic downstream, 12 million tons. Do you know what's the biggest year they ever had? It was 3.3 million tons. Today they are doing about 2 million tons. So the underlying assumptions that drive the Master Manual just don't make any sense. They are out of date and need to be chsinged. It's not just with respect to barge traffic. We also know that recreation was downplayed when the Master Manual was originally devised. It was downplayed because people did not anticipate the tremendous growth that recreation would experience in the upstream States and its economic importance. We now know from the work that has been done in the preliminary assessment ofbenefits that recreation is $67 million a year; navigation, $14 million. So recreation is far more important economically than is navigation, over —4 to 1 in terms of its importance, but it was given short shrift again, another signal that the Master Manual is simply out ofdate. So that's why this hearing is important. The Master Manual is now going through a review, and we have some questions to ask about the direction ofthat review. Basically, our motivation is sim- ple: we want fair treatment. We understand there are legitimate downstream interests, as there are legitimate upstream interests. We understand that recreation deserves a focus, as does barge traffic. But we want them given the appropriate focus, fair treatment. That's what we ask for and that's what we'll insist on. I want to thank Chairman Baucus for holding this hearing. I was asking Max this morning how old he is. Max is only 51 years old, and here he is, chairman of a major committee, the Environment and Public Works Committee. He is also the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, which means that at some point he will be chairman of the Finance Committee, which is the most powerful committee in the United States Senate. So Montana has a lot of clout. You have a lot of clout because your senior Senator here has a lot of clout. It is remarkable for a man 51 years old to be in the positions of responsibility that Max Baucus has. I just say to you that these are very, very important points not only for Montana but for all of us upstream, because his clout is ours and his power and his position help us assure that we get fair treatment. Again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing today. Senator Baucus. That means we have to produce now. [Laugh- ter.] [Applause.] Senator BAUCUS. Thank you very much. I would now like to turn to the first panel. I will introduce the panel for everyone's benefit, and also remind the panelists to speak only five minutes. We have three panels and we don't have a lot oftime. We will be able to get to everyone ifwe all stay within our time limits. I will encourage Senator Conrad and myselfto restrain ourselves, too, so that we can get to all the panelists and give each panel a fair shake. The first panel includes Mr. James Duffus. Mr. Dufius is Direc- tor of Natural Resources Management Issues of the Resources,