Time is running short. The Army Corps said it would report back to the lawmakers this week as the usual Midwest dry season, combined with the region’s worst drought since 1956, is projected to push Mississippi levels so low shipping would have to be halted in a section near the river’s midpoint south of St. Louis. At risk are 20,000 jobs and $130 million in wages and benefits if the river is closed for two months, the American Waterways Operators, a lobbying group based in Arlington, Virginia, estimates.
If the Army Corps does decide to release more water, shippers say it would take two weeks for the increased flow to reach the parched portions of the Mississippi, which the Missouri joins near St. Louis.
The fight over whether the Missouri should be used to shore up a dry Mississippi looks very different upstream. The barge traffic that dominates debates downriver doesn’t exist. Hydropower, recreation -- and, in recent years, supplying a boom in hydraulic fracturing for oil and natural gas that’s given North Dakota the lowest U.S. unemployment rate -- all require the Missouri’s water.
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