Water Quality Program

Great Rivers seeks to protect and preserve the waters of Missouri and surrounding states. Our water quality program begins with monitoring proposed federal, state and local actions that will adversely affect water quality. Great Rivers is frequently involved in matters that adversely impact water quality. This includes assisting environmental groups, citizens’ organizations and individuals in their legal challenges designed to protect the quality of the waters.

Floodplain Protection Program

Our floodplain protection program consists of bringing legal challenges to environmentally detrimental floodplain development and the over-engineering of rivers by means of levees and dams which destroy floodplains and aggravate flooding risk. These activities affect all of the people who inhabit and work in the watersheds of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers which drain major portions of the central and northwestern United States.

To read about our cases concerning water issues, click here.

Flood Plain Development
A Curse, Not a Blessing

We want to thank the Post-Dispatch and its writers who produced the very illustrative articles about flood plain development. It is essential that the public be fully informed about this issue, especially in light of 1993's disastrous flood and the plans to develop large portions of the flood plains in the St. Louis area.

In addition to the proposed developments discussed in the articles, the Army Corps of Engineers is in the final stages of planning for a proposed levee on the north bank of the Missouri River at Jefferson City. This levee is intended to protect against a flood which has a statistical probability of occurring once each 1000 years. Current specs call for an earthern wall almost 5 miles in length, 150 feet wide and 15 to 23 feet high. Scientific data now indicate that a levee of this size will have a significant negative impact on flood levels both upstream and downstream of the levee site.

The Jefferson City levee, when considered in combination with the levees that will be needed to protect the St. Louis area commercial and residential developments now on the drawing boards, will mean that virtually the entire length of the Lower Missouri from Sioux City, Iowa to its mouth at the Mississippi, will be constricted by levees and other flood control structures constructed in an uncoordinated and haphazard fashion by the federal government, private levee districts and individuals.

In terms of flood risk, this means that the areas now designated for development in existing flood plains will experience even greater flooding in the future as more and more water is cut off from natural flood plains and forced downstream to the St. Louis and St. Charles County flood plains at ever-increasing heights and velocities. Why is an upstream project like the Jefferson City levee which will aggravate downstream flooding, being built while development is being planned for some of the very land which will eventually be flooded because of the levee? The irrationality of planning for downstream flood plain development simultaneously with more scheduled upstream levee construction boggles the imagination.

Increased flood risk is only part of the price we will pay for this runaway pattern of development. As your writers point out, the loss of natural wetlands will also be a major casualty. These wetlands not only ameliorate the effects of destructive flooding by storing flood waters for gradual release back into the main river channel, they also serve as filters for pollutants and as habitat for a rich diversity of wildlife. Although the Corps of Engineers is legally required to "mitigate" wetland loss, the man-made wetlands often do not function as effectively and efficiently as their natural counterparts.

Thus far, no public or private entities involved in the over-engineering of the river have considered the overall river system impact of their activities enough to abandon these destructive measures. The most consistent critics are usually environmentally aware individuals and organizations who attempt to forestall levees and flood plain development through public education and litigation.

At Great River Rivers Environmental Law Center, we are carrying on the tradition of our founder, Lewis C. Green, in fighting to stop the despoliation of the three major rivers which converge in the St. Louis area. We do this primarily by challenging the governmental agencies which promote and carry out the construction of levees and the development of flood plains. This is a vital part of the struggle to prevail over the forces of shortsightedness and greed which are driving the current rush to engineer these mighty rivers out of existence in the name of "progress" and "expansion."

Again, congratulations to the Post for its timely and informative coverage of one of the most important issues facing us today.