The following recommendations on the management of the Missouri River System, including the Master Water Control Manual, were developed by the Sierra Club after extensive meetings, discussions, and reviews by Club activists and entities throughout the Missouri River Basin.
1. We support native habitat restoration. This should be an over-riding goal of Missouri River management, and all other management goals and recommendations should be subservient to this main goal.
2. There should be no new dams in the Missouri River basin, either on the main stem of the River or on any of the tributaries.
3. There should be no new levees that protect beyond “agricultural level” protection (5 to 10 year flood levels).
4. We support basin-wide mitigation funding. The Corps of Engineers has been authorized significant funding to conduct mitigation efforts that will counter the negative impacts of the past decades of river management and we support targeted funding continuing these efforts.
5. We support funding for conservation easements. In addition to public acquisition of floodplain lands, such easements will help restore the river corridor. They can be funded through several programs in the Farm Bill.
6. We support monitoring for water quality, habitat quality, species decline and recovery. This monitoring is particularly important for threatened and endangered species, but is also necessary to prevent other species from becoming threatened or endangered.
7. We support adaptive management, as proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers. The results of the monitoring must serve as a guide to making adaptive changes to the management plan to address any problems that are not solved or that develop during implementation of the plan.
8. The Missouri River should be “reconnected” to its floodplain by levee setbacks – giving the River room to allow floodwaters to move downstream without causing flood losses and replenish and restore a more natural riparian corridor.
9. Since the beneficial uses of the River, other than navigation, far exceed the benefits from navigation, managing for those other uses should be the main focus of management of the Missouri River System.
10. We support “unbalancing” the large three upper reservoirs on the Missouri River. This will allow exposure of the sandbars and mudflats in the upper basin reservoirs on a cyclical basis, which should enhance nesting success for the endangered bird species. However, careful monitoring and adaptive management should be used to ensure positive results.
11. We support more dependence on natural riverine systems, and less on engineering structures and measures. This includes modifying the bank stabilization structures to allow restoration of a more diverse riparian habitat in parts of the river corridor.
12. We support the “split-season” flow regime for spring high flows in one of every three years, and low summer flows each year. However, we do not believe the “fall rise” is historically or ecologically justified.
13. We oppose out-of-basin diversions and basin depletions. These will impact natural fish and wildlife communities within the basin and potentially reduce the economic benefits of the Missouri River to basin-wide human communities.