BENTON - Several nature groups are suing the US Army Corps of Engineers in a bid to stop work on a navigation channel on 195 miles of the Mississippi River until the Corps complies with environmental laws.
The suit, filed May 13 in the US District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, seeks an injunction against a regulating works project form the Missouri River to the Ohio River.
Attorney Stephen Volker of Berkeley, Calif., wrote that his clients brought the action to protect the river from ecological collapse.
“The project vastly exceeds the scope of the regulating works project authorized by Congress,” Volker wrote.
He represents National Wildlife Federation, American Rivers, Prairie Rivers Network, Missouri Coalition for the Environment, and great Rivers Habitat Alliance. The suit also names individual commanders as defendants.
According to the complaint, the lawsuit is aimed at protecting “the 195-mile Middle Mississippi River reach (MMR) of the Mississippi River from further irreparable environmental harm and ecological collapse.”
Volker claims the Corps has failed to properly evaluate the ecological impact of the project and carries out harmful activities, purportedly to maintain a navigation channel at least nine feed deep and 300 feet wide from north of St. Louis and its confluence with the Ohio River at the southern tip of Illinois.
“Regulating works activities include construction and maintenance of river training structures such as dikes, weirs and chevrons, and placement of bank hardening works known as revetments,” Volker wrote.
He wrote that activities include dredging to control route, depth, and flow rate.
In 2017, Volker wrote, the Corps issued a decision to continue construction of structures through at least 2034.
He wrote that the decision violated statutes and ignored data showing that such structures cause flooding by narrowing the channel.
"River training structures previously constructed by the Corps during the past several decades have already profoundly reconfigured the Middle Mississippi River to the detriment of its fish and wildlife," Volker wrote.
He wrote that the Corps developed structures with different impacts on flow, level, shore erosion, and habitat.
The structures allegedly place communities at risk of injury and damage “from increased flooding because they narrow, and thus constrain, the river’s flow during high water events.”
In 1990, the Corps began building weirs at bends to direct water to the inside of bends and prevent the channel from migrating out.
And after 2000, according to the suit, the Corps began using chevrons to split the flow and provide a secondary channel near the bank. The Corps also installed rootless dikes that don’t attach to the bank.
“The original environmental impact statements did not consider the effects of these structures because they had not yet been invented,” Volker wrote.
From 1980 to 2009, the Corps built at least 380 structures in the Middle Mississippi including 40,000 feet of wing dikes and weirs, the suit states.
The plaintiffs seek an order from the court declaring that the defendants abused their discretion by violating the National Environmental Policy Act, violating mitigation requirements of the Water Resources Development, failing to comply with the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act, and exceeding the scope of the authority of the Corps by the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1927.
They also ask that the defendants be ordered to prepare an adequate SEIS for the project, comply with mitigation requirements, comply with applicable laws, and be enjoined from constructing new river training structures until they have complied with the laws.
The plaintiffs ask to be awarded attorneys’ fees and costs, plus litigation expenses.
Three lawyers at Volker’s firm, Alexis Krieg, Stephanie Clarke, and Jamey Volker, also represent the nature groups.
Bruce Morrison of Great Rivers Environmental Law Center in St. Louis acts as local counsel.
The court clerk assigned Magistrate Judge Gilbert Sison, but one or both of the parties declined consent for magistrate jurisdiction.
Chief District Judge Nancy Rosenstengel will preside.
US District Court for the Southern District of Illinois case number 3:20-cv-00443-NJR