WASHINGTON (DTN) -- The Corps of Engineers must make flood control the first priority along the Missouri River and quickly rebuild levees that jeopardize farms and communities still picking up the pieces after this year's flood.

Those were the overriding concerns as nine congressmen from six states that faced flooding this year reflected a bipartisan, unified front testifying before a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee Wednesday.

The subcommittee is examining options for changing Corps of Engineers policies for managing the Missouri River. This comes after record flooding in 2011 that included more than 60 million acre feet of runoff, compared to 25 million in a normal year.

Missouri Farmers Union President Richard Oswald, a DTN contributor, testified, explaining he was effectively a poster child for the damage from the flood as he lost both his house and his farm.

"There isn't a way it didn't affect me," Oswald said in an interview.

Two levee breeches along an 8-mile stretch near Oswald's farm remain unrepaired. Oswald said he understood $8 million had been secured for repairs and another $12 million was expected to be approved, but projections are that the repairs would cost $47 million. Thus, there's a major breech in funding the levee reconstruction.

"We're not going to have any protection going into next spring," Oswald said. "We're more vulnerable in 2012 than we were in 2011."

This month the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri reported 207,000 acres of crop losses totaling nearly $110 million in the state of Missouri alone. No totals have been calculated for the full watershed losses.

It will take more than $2 billion to rebuild all of the flood-control levees damaged nationally by this year's flooding, according to Corps of Engineers' estimates.

Brigadier General John McMahon, commander of the Northwest Division for the Corps of Engineers, told lawmakers that the Corps was "taking a hard analytical look" at this year's flood and what it may do to change future operations on the river. In addition, the Corps was doing an internal review of reservoir operations and established an external review as well that will be completed between mid-December and mid-January.

Rep. Bob Gibbs, R-Ohio, who chairs the subcommittee, questioned the value of having the Corps of Engineers invest heavily in fish and wildlife restoration instead of flood protection and river navigation. "I believe the federal government should focus its Corps of Engineers dollars on these activities and halt, for awhile, investing in environmental restoration projects that do not provide the long-term jobs we so desperately need right now," Gibbs said.

One strategy is for lawmakers to downsize the responsibilities of the Corps, said Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo. Graves said every effort should be made to ensure funds are provided for building proper levee protection.

Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, said the needed flood repairs allow lawmakers a chance to re-evaluate priorities and consider changes. Further, Boswell criticized the Corps for telling local residents to tear down temporary sandbagged levee support along the Missouri River. Boswell said it doesn't make sense to spend money taking down temporary flood protection that could be needed again next spring.

"That simply makes no sense to me," Boswell said. "It's those type of actions that drive up costs and the blood pressure of local residents."

Rep. John Duncan, R-Tenn., also questioned the desire of the Corps of Engineers to try to buy more land along flooded riverbottoms, citing testimony from Holt County, Mo., County Clerk Kathy Kunkel. Buying up land takes it off the tax rolls, making it harder to fund local governments and schools.

"The federal government already owns far too much land already," Duncan said.

Kunkel testified the federal government planned to buy 160,000 acres between Sioux City, Iowa, and St. Louis to covert it to a pre-Lewis and Clark state.

Rep. Nick Berg, R-N.D., said he felt the flooding this year was both natural and manmade because the Corps failed to make quicker decisions that could have minimized the impacts of heavy snowpack melts and intensified rains. Further, Berg said he doesn't see how the Corps can look beyond 2012 in planning for the river when there is a risk of flooding again in 2012. Berg noted Corps officials believe 2011 floods were a unique event. "I think that is naïve and short-sighted."

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, has a bill that would require the Corps to re-evaluate the storage space of the reservoirs along the Missouri River in Montana and both North and South Dakota. If each reservoir could hold more in times when flood risks are higher and release more when there are drought conditions, that would better manage overall flood control, he said. King noted the Corps has to be told to make such adjustments.

"They don't want to do something permanent," King said. "We have to tell them."

In the Senate, Missouri's two senators are working to introduce amendments to an appropriations bill for the Army Corps of Engineers that would require the Corps to focus on rebuilding levees, locks and dams on both the Missouri and the Mississippi rivers. That appropriations bill is expected to come back to the Senate floor next week.

Chris Clayton can be reached at chris.clayton@telventdtn.com

(CZ/SK)

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