By John Flicker
President, National Audubon Society

It begins with a trickle among the white pines in Minnesota's Itasca State Park, not far from the farm where I grew up. 

It gathers volume for 1,366 miles before it merges with the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois. It is an internationally significant flyway, a critical fishery, and a national treasure. The Upper Mississippi River is one of America's best-kept environmental secrets--and it's threatened as never before. 

In the past 150 years we have sacrificed much of the Mississippi to economic progress. We have cut off 90 percent of its natural floodplain with levees and straightened 85 percent of its once-meandering channel for towboats.

By the end of this year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must recommend to Congress whether to expand the 36 dams and navigation locks on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers. The agency is poised to recommend doubling the size of seven of the locks, calling it an economic necessity for the upper Midwest and the nation. The study behind that recommendation took seven years and $50 million to produce, and it's a seriously flawed document.

The study concludes that grain production in the upper Midwest will vastly increase and that there will be a market for the grain--both questionable assumptions. Further, the corps, which is required to consider the environmental impact of its projects, based its assessment on a fatally limited amount of data, say river biologists.

In February the study's former chief economist--who was removed from his post after maintaining that no expansion was necessary--filed a whistleblower's request for an investigation. In reviewing his request, the U.S. Special Counsel found "substantial likelihood" that "corps officials manipulated the cost-benefit analysis [resulting in a] proposal for unnecessary and expensive improvements potentially costing in excess of $1 billion."

We at Audubon believe there is a better way. The answer isn't to pour more concrete. Instead, we and the Upper Mississippi River Conservation Committee have devised an approach that will guarantee a healthier river ecosystem while still meeting the transportation needs of the region. We recommend such diverse ideas as using existing locks and dams to improve habitat management and mimicking natural river processes in the floodplain. For a copy of our report, A River That Works and a Working River, call 651-290-1695 or send an e-mail to dmcguiness@audubon.org.

The Upper Mississippi is more than a highway for barges. It is also a highway for fish, a flyway for birds. We can restore the river. But we must act now, before we lose one of America's great ecological and cultural treasures.