Minnesota Judge Gives Corps a Reprieve in Missouri River Contempt Ruling
Just as states upstream and downstreamrepresenting conservation, recreation and navigation interestscompete to control the Missouri River's flow regime, different legal jurisdictions are moving the dispute in different directions. A judge in U.S. District Court in St. Paul, Minn. on July 24 issued a two-week stay of another federal judge's two-day-old contempt order against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. On July 25 the federal 8th Circuit Court in St. Louis ruled that the order for higher flows, which would have favored barge interests over endangered species and upriver recreational activities, had never been put in place. The Corps has maintained that maintaining higher flows in the river puts the agency at odds with recreation and conservation interests, who are suing to enforce lower flows.
Judge Gladys Kessler in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a contempt citation after the Corps delayed, pending appeal, her July 12 directive to limit the river's flow rate to no more than 21,000 cu ft per sec. This effectively would drop the channel level at Kansas City from about 14 ft to 8 ft. Failure to do so would trigger fines of $500,000 a day.