Monday, Apr. 17, 1972
Rescuing Rivers
Blame environmentalism for the fact that federal agencies can no longer get things done in the old, unquestioned way. The Atomic Energy Commission's proposed nuclear power plants, the Interior Department's plans to lease drilling rights to offshore oil deposits, Corps of Engineers' waterway projects--all these schemes are collecting dust on bureaucrats' shelves.
Forcing the new delays and difficulties is the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which requires federal agencies to publish detailed statements describing the expected impact of any proposed project on its natural surroundings. Last week, that mandate caught up with the Agriculture Department's Soil Conservation Service. As a result, the SCS is modifying its ambitious plans to "channelize" up to 150,000 miles of U.S. waterways. Channelization means widening, deepening and straightening streams to speed the runoff of rain and melting snow in order to prevent flooding. First bulldozers growl alongside a creek, shoving aside trees and shrubs as they clear a swath up to 100 feet wide on each bank. Then come the draglines, their heads dipping methodically to gouge the new, deeper watercourse.
In this fashion, bucolic streams have been turned into open culverts. Consider Gilbert River Run, a shady, trout-filled stream that used to meander through Maryland. After being channelized it runs straight as a highway, its waters almost bereft of fish and its banks barren of trees. The same fate has befallen Alabama's Granny Branch, Arkansas' Flat Creek, Georgia's Little Tallappoosa River, and thousands of miles of other American brooks.
Aquatic Disaster. Ironically, the Soil Conservation Service was one of the Federal Government's earliest environmental champions. Founded in the mid-1930s, it set about repairing the ravages of the great Dust Bowl in the Midwest by introducing farmers to contour plowing, planting trees as windbreaks and other means of controlling erosion. Its motto: "Hold the raindrop where it falls."
The SCS then moved to hold down floods, too, through channelization. At first, few minded. Farmers gained new arable acreage from what was once useless bottom land, developers won new building sites, and construction workers had new jobs. The SCS planned channelization projects by the hundreds.
But as the ecology-conscious 1970s began, some people wondered whether the new ditches did not simply send flood waters downstream, relaying the damage. The Interior Department's Nathaniel Reed, Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, found evidence of the impact of channelization on local ecosystems. After ditching, he told a congressional subcommittee last summer, an acre of Mississippi's Tippah River, which used to support an average of 241 Ibs. of fish, supported only 4.4 Ibs. Moreover, silt is swept downstream, where it cuts off sunlight in the water and destroys food chains--an "aquatic version of the Dust Bowl disaster."
In vain, conservation groups suggested less disruptive alternatives where possible, such as building levees behind stream banks or prohibiting use of flood plains through zoning. Seeking redress in court, they argued before a North Carolina federal judge that despite an SCS review of the environmental effects of its pending projects, the agency was still violating the 1969 Act. In a key decision last month, the judge agreed with them and ruled fhat the SCS should issue the required statements.
Pressed further by the Interior Department and the Council on Environmental Quality, the SCS has decided to conduct the necessary environmental studies for hundreds of ecologically questionable channelization projects. "We aren't out to channelize everything," says SCS Administrator Kenneth Grant. "We're taking an approach with a stress on an absolute minimum environmental impact."
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