Gov. Blunt Orders Nixon, Childers To Block Federal Plan to Divert Portion of Missouri River
January 18, 2008
JEFFERSON CITY—Gov. Matt Blunt today ordered Attorney General Jay Nixon and Department of Natural Resources Director Doyle Childers to jointly pursue every legal option to block a federal plan that will divert a significant portion of the Missouri River out of its natural channel into North Dakota.
"Too many Missourians depend on the water from our nation’s largest river system for drinking water, electrical power, crop irrigation and transportation to have this water needlessly wasted in a $1 billion taxpayer-funded project hatched in Washington," Gov. Blunt said. "I am ordering Attorney General Nixon and Director Childers to immediately use every available legal option to block this ill-advised federal plan."
Gov. Blunt noted that even now, before the projected diversion takes place, Kansas City already is being forced to relocate water intake structures for its treatment plant, and there are reports that several of the state’s power plants have had to purchase expensive power off the grid to meet customer demands because their plants could not access sufficient river water.
The Bureau of Land Reclamation has issued a final environmental impact statement, clearing another hurdle for the Red River Valley Diversion project. This plan could pump up to 2,000 gallons per second from one of the upper reservoirs on the Missouri River into a series of canals, lakes and rivers to develop a new water supply for Grand Forks and Fargo, ND, as well as improve the fisheries on the Red River, which flows north into Canada. The 2,000 gallon per second rate is one quarter of the winter flow of the Missouri River at Lake Sakakawea in North Dakota.
The Red River Valley Diversion project has been actively opposed by the states of Missouri and Minnesota, the Canadian Federal Government, and the Province of Manitoba for well over a decade.
Under terms of the North Dakota Water Resources Act passed by the Senate in 2000, Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne must report to Congress by the end of March how the proposed plan meets international agreements with the Canadians and how it will impact the states, including Missouri.
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