At about this time of year we have the celebration of "Earth Day". What ever in the world does this mean? Of course those well versed in the thought process of political correctness know that it means that we are all going to hell in a basket and the only salvation is for us to return to the ways of our forefathers, give no more back to the land than that which we take and pick up after ourselves and others in the process. Now who can quarrel with this philosophy? But wait! Could it be that they have exaggerated the situation, misplaced some critical facts and misinterpreted evidence; all in the name of personal gain? Judge for yourself.
EXAGGERATED SITUATION -
Let's take a recent case, the naming of the Missouri river as "the most
endangered river in the United States". Big muddy got its name long
before the Corps of Engineers embarked on their plan to control the annual
floods by building earthen dams along its upper reaches. And why was it
called "Big Muddy"? "It was in 1673 when Marquette and Joliet ventured
down the Wisconsin to the Mississippi and then down that river until they
observed the great muddy inflow from the west which constituted wherein
man's first sight, if not first knowledge of the Missouri." (1) And, as
recorded by Edward Harris, "We caught only a few cat fish, and these I
do not much relish. No otters, beavers, muskrats, or even minks, are
found in or about the turbid waters of this all-mighty streem, the
water of which looks more like that of a hog puddle than any thing else
I can compare it to. About one-tenth of its bulk forms a deposit in
half an hour."(3) One only has to visit the flat plains and snow
covered
mountains to understand that the water draining some one-third of the
continental United States, has to go somewhere. That is not the issue,
the issue is when. From November through April, much of the area is
snow-covered, frozen and ice jammed. So come the spring thaws, the water
begins to ooze into the streams and fill the lakes, then with a burst of
warm weather, the flooding begins. Yankton and Vermillion South
Dakota as well as points south have experienced devastating floods. (The
entire town of Vermillion was
forced to move to higher ground in the 1880's (2)). We are indeed
fortunate that shortly after the second world war, the Missouri was
placed under a semblance of control. As in all cases political, one needs
to provide justification, never-mind that the reasons are far-reaching and
unattainable. For the Missouri, the reasons were four fold; 1) control
flooding, 2) provide recreation, 3) provide waters for irrigation and 4)
provide a uniform level of waters in the Missouri and the Mississippi to
ensure that seasonal barge traffic could be extended from August to
December.
Ask yourself how does the Missouri become an endangered river, suddenly? Why it was endangered when we put the dams in place and regulated flow to accomplish the task foresighted. So the spokespeople and their misguided followers who include illustrious United States senators, our Vice President and others with an axe to grind, all at once discover that the Missouri is endangered! Either they are deaf, dumb and blind or else maybe, just maybe, they are just paying off past debts. No it is in the name of ecology and endangered species that they all have come to the fore to identify Big Muddy as a modern day catastrophe.
MISPLACED FACT
One of the statements often seen in defense of "protecting the Missouri",
is the devastating role of agriculture in the demise of this great river.
Quick to point out that the farmer's fertilizer trickles into the water,
and cattle grazing the hills and valleys leads to erosion. They ignore
the farmers concern that an ounce of fertilizer lost is money lost and
never to be regained. Most everyone will admit that farmers are perhaps
the most frugal citizens of our great country so how does this wash? In
fact every city in the United States contributes more pollution as
fertilizer waste to our streams and rivers than do the combined losses
from industry and agriculture (note I say losses, i.e., uncontrollable,
whereas the towns and cities deliberately add treated waste to our
waterways and in times of excessive rainfall or snow-melt, the sewers
are allowed to empty without limit.)
And all those cattle grazing the pastures and range lands, can they do more damage than the roving great herds of buffalo that preceded them? Of course not. This from "Up the Missouri with Aububon, the Journal of Edward Harris" in May 5, 1843, he recorded; "You would be surprised to see how the whole country here is trodden up by the feet of the Buffalo, and we see their deeply worn paths in all directions ..."(3) Erosion continues but it is not due to lustful extravagance on the part of land owners and cattlemen. No, when it rains, these prairies yield to the onslaught. One need only visit the Badlands of South Dakota or North Dakota or the Grand Canyon if you like. There is only a smattering of cattle in these great wastelands, but erosion has occurred, is occurring and will continue to occur regardless of the doomspeakers.
Or, look at Elizabeth Custer, wife of General George Custer, had to say about the Missouri. "The river is very crooked and full of sand-bars, the channel changing every year. The banks are so honeycombed by the force of the water that great portions are constantly caving in. (pp. 186, Boots and Saddles, 1885)". She also sang the praises of water brought from the Black Hills, as it was so refreshing compared to the muddy water they were forced to use when encamped on the banks of the Missouri.
The misplaced fact is that pollution, erosion and environmental change is the result of natural forces enhanced by man. Nature does quite well with out the intervention of man in creating its own spoils. The issue is; what is polution? If it is the presence of debris and land erosion, then Nature should be viewed as having been caught in the process of redistributing and rearranging the land masses. However, environmentalist love to credit man with these changes, an often wrongheaded charge. They should focus their attention instead on the problems of population increase and how this contributes to the more serious problems of society and attendent polution.
MISINTERPRETED EVIDENCE
Industry and commerce keep careful records. So do farmers. Therefore it
is not too difficult to find that a fertilizer plant discharges parts per
billion of ammonia into a river or stream. Likewise, a farmer buys tons
of fertilizer, he sells bushels of product and one can calculate that he
obviously did not get one-hundred percent recovery of the fertilizer in
the crop that he produced, therefore it must have gone somewhere and we
could assume that it must have gone into the water or air. Sounds
reasonable until you study the nitrogen balance of soil. This living
system is actively creating nitrogen fertilizers by nitrogen-fixation and
destroying nitrogen compounds by a process (nitrification) that yields
pure nitrogen gas
(which makes up some 78 percent of the air that we breath.) It is
unfortunate that the farmer must suffer the loss of fertilizer by conversion
to nitrogen gas but this is just one of those "other" cost of doing
business.
Evidence is easily found to convict industry or farmers of being polluters, but this is a strawman created by those who want to disingeniously divert attention away from the real polluter. YOU! Every time you go to the john, you contribute more to pollution to the waterways than does the typical farmer's acre of corn or soybeans. And there are some 260 million soles in the United States contributing 365 days a year. Compare that to the roughly 400 million acres of corn and soybeans. Agriculture is small potatoes indeed when compared to man's own waste. If the environmentalist were really interested in preserving this country, they would become spokesmen (and women) for zero population growth!
PERSONAL GAIN
Now we all know that being environmentally friendly is a sure vote getter.
And it sells books, occupies squibs in the papers and gives "teach"
something to send little Johnny home with that shows that we are
concerned. Enough about personal gain, but in a recent book, an old
activist reemerged after some 20 years to rebeat the same old drums and
guess what, his book got rave reviews from the arrogant editors that
forgot that his book that predicted the cataclysmic collapse of society
back in the early 80's was just plain wrong.
--- So what are we to do. First let's examine what the proponents of Big Muddy reclamation involve. Do they want to remove the dams, let floods wreck havoc on down river cities and landowners, stifle traffic on the Missouri and Mississippi from August till the floods of April? Or do they want to limit rightful use of the land in the plains to appease some quirky environmentalist notion of what is "good for the land"? Or do they want to as good citizens take a natural resource which is being managed very well by the Corps of Engineers and affected states and place it in the hands of some distant group that knows better how to manage the assets?
Reasonable actions are called for. In my humble opinion, one should visit the headwaters of the Missouri and see the near pristine nature of that area, mostly unaffected by man. Tour the lakes along controlled stretch of the river and see how we have all benefited economically, culturally and recreationally. Then, visit the stretch below the last dam at Yankton, South Dakota and see the untamed river before it reaches Sioux City, Iowa. See the beauty of farmland well managed, bluffs as Lewis and Clark viewed them, explore the Vermillion river to the area of Spirit Mound and experience the annual fishing for paddlefish below the Gavin's Point Dam at Yankton.
If only one could assembly Billy Bartram, George Catlin and Jim Cook to defend Big Muddy and Mencken, Brann and Irving as masters of invective to shame the doomspeakers and nere-do-wells that infest our country.
Is the Missouri river endangered? Yes, but only if the misplaced interest of the politicians and environmentalist get their way in destroying one of our great national assets.
1) The Development of the Missouri Valley, by Will G. Robinson, South
Dakota Historical Collections, vol 22, pp445, 1946
2) History of Clay County, Herbert S. Schell, 1976
3) Up the Missouri with Audubon, the Journals of Edward Harris, University
of Oklahoma Press, 1951, pp 21, 23.
ABOUT Joe Wortham