Meramec Dam Project

[Brian Jones]

I am looking for information/facts regarding the Meramec Basin Project. I believe that someone on another site presented some misinformation regarding the project and I would like to verify his claims as fact or fiction.

A link to the thread: http://www.tinboats.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=24207

Thanks

Brian

[Greasy B]

I'm not sure how much information is a available online. Probably your best source would be the book Passages of a Stream by James P Jackson. It's a fascinating story of how the first COE dam project to have been put to a public vote was turned down. The vote was a non binding referendum that helped usher in the end of the dam building era. A lot of folks on this forum can also provide insight.

[MoSportsmen]

If you are refering to his infrence that LOZ money people put a stop to the project, I doubt you are going to find much info on that. If that be the case the money peolpe shurly covered their tracks pretty well. As I recall the thing that really killed the project was that it was determined that the cave system would make the lake leek and not hold water.

[Smalliebigs]

Brian,

hey what's up??? Al Agnew is somewhat of an authority on that project and made it a mission to get it stopped. I know he said he devoted a lot of time and energy to stop that darn as he had seen several other rivers destroyed prior to the Meramec project. He can give you a book to read about the Meramec basin project. I don't think it was the LOZ lobby as the fellow suggest on tinboats.com....which is a very cool forum I must say.

[Greasy B]

Yea, it was a whole string of events that happened as the country was experiencing an environmental awakening in the mid 70's. Cool story.

[exiledguide]

President Regan signed the deathorization bill on Dec 28, 1981. Thirty years ago seems like only a short time ago a lot of people worked stoppingthis project. I didn't know Al was involved, to him and the others who convinced the rest of us to get involved and defeat it, I am forever grateful that my grandchilderns grandchildern with have the chance to float, swim and fish streams like the Huzzah and Cortois like I did. I still can't believe it happened. Thanks again.

[Stoneroller]

the power of informed people at work. and i'm glad to see brian jones come looking for some facts and not simply opinions or 'reading something on the internet' the 'home of the unsubstantiated claim'. knowledge is power!

[Greasy B]

Yes, good for Brian.

Stoneroller is right on the money. Knowledge is much more interesting than blather.

[Al Agnew]

Wow, the riverrunner guy is a doofus!

Yeah, let's dam up the very best part of one of the best rivers in the Ozarks so that he can run it without worrying about canoes and rocks and shallows. Sure, there are plenty of other rivers...and every one of them is a gem, as is the Meramec.

I've heard before that Lake of the Ozarks "money" was behind the people who fought the dam. Who knows, there might have been some. Maybe some Branson and Table Rock and Bull Shoals money, too. So what? The dam was defeated because of a whole lot of people who cared more about a fine river than another boring lake. They didn't vote it down because they didn't want the competition for LOZ. It wasn't LOZ money that convinced people that Onondaga Cave and a bunch of other caves shouldn't be flooded. It wasn't LOZ money that let people know that the geology around the dam site was questionable for holding water.

As Greasy said, there were a lot of things that came together to defeat the dam. And like he also said, "Passages of a Stream" is the best source of info on the issue. But the short and sweet version is that the dam was authorized in 1966, preliminary land acquisition began in 1968, and that was at the time when environmentalism first because a force to be reckoned with. Local landowners and area environmental organizations banded together and began to advocate against the dam. The Corps of Engineers environmental impact statement, required by a new law, was woefully inadequate and that gave the anti-dam people some traction. The Corps had assured everybody that Onondaga Cave would not be flooded, but Don Rimbach, then an employee of Lester Dill who owned the cave at the time, used subterranean mapping techniques to show that some of the most unique cave rooms and formations would be either flooded or inaccessible because of flooding of passages leading to them. Dill persuaded Congressman James Symington to visit the cave, and he likened the loss of those formations to "the flooding of Westminster Abbey". Rimbach also poked around in the dam area and discovered many cave passages that could potentially cause the dam to leak and fail. Although the Corps assured everybody that they could grout those passages with concrete, he pointed out that many of them were filled with soil and sediment from surface erosion into the systems, and the grout might not be able to reach those cavities.

By 1975, the Missouri Conservation Federation, which had been in favor of the dam up until that time, came out against it in a close vote at their convention. Three weeks after the convention, a petition of 45,000 signatures against the dam was presented to pro-dam Governor Kit Bond on the steps of the capitol building. Three weeks after that, Congressman Symington presented three anti-dam speakers in the House Appropriations Committee as they were considering continuing funding for the dam, the first time anything other than brief one person statements had been allowed against the dam in that venue.

Later that year, MDC came out against the planned dam on the Bourbeuse River after a extensive study of land to be flooded that showed it was of such high wildlife quality that it would take 60,000 acres of less fertile hill country land elsewhere to mitigate the loss of the 7000 acres slated to be flooded. And MDC let it be known unofficially that a similar study they had done on the Meramec Dam would show the same results, but they were waiting on further info on the Indiana bat before making the entire study public. The Indiana bat was an endangered species that had been found living in Greens Cave and other caves that were to be flooded.

In early 1976, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Nathanial Reed called the dam a "luxury recreational boondoggle" and an "environmental Edsel". And in June of that year, the Teton Dam in Idaho collapsed, lending further credence to the possibility of the dam failing. By that time, polls were showing that a heavy majority of people in the St. Louis area opposed the dam, and statewide only 19% supported it. But in the election cycle of 1976, all major candidates either still supported the dam or made no mention of it, except for John Danforth, who was running for the Senate and was strongly against it. Joe Teasdale, running for governor against Bond, avoided the issue entirely, and both Senator Eagleton and Congressman Ichord, whose district included the dam area, were still pro-dam.

Danforth won, Teasdale beat Bond, who was still pro-dam, and most importantly, Jimmy Carter won the Presidency. He had campaigned against federal water projects, and once he became the President and Danforth won, Eagleton read the political winds and said he could no longer support the dam without a referendum, and would request a delay in funding. Only Ichord was still in power and still for the dam, and when he put out a carefully worded poll of his district that was meant to show support for the dam, even he was surprised at how narrowly the rigged poll won. Carter put the dam on his hit list of wasteful federal water projects and deleted funding from his budget. Meanwhile the project was already suffering tremendous cost overruns due to the problems with the dam site.

All that came together to force the politicians to hold a non-binding referendum in the counties of the Meramec Basin plus the city of St. Louis in 1978. The Corps, in a last ditch effort to turn the tide, came up with new justifications for the dam; it had originally been touted mainly for flood control and recreation and wasn't even designed for power generation, but they redesigned it to produce electric power, even though most experts agreed it would not be efficient at that because of flows that were too low in the summer when the most power was needed. And they came up with a "desperate" need for a water supply for Sullivan.

But while both St. Louis newspapers, the Globe Democrat and the Post Dispatch, had been for the dam, the Post changed and came out with its biggest editorial since Pearl Harbor opposing the dam. A month later MDC came out formally against the dam as well, due to the quality of the habitat to be lost and the threat to the Indiana bat. The Sierra Club enlisted Marlin Perkins of the St. Louis Zoo and "Wild Kingdom" fame to narrate a film on the river that was shown before movies in all the major St. Louis area theaters.

The dam was voted down with 64% against it on Aug. 8, 1978. Although the referendum was non-binding, it convinced the entire MO congressional delegation to push for deauthorization, and in December of 1981, President Reagan signed the bill deauthorizing the dam, the first Corps project ever to be halted and deauthorized after the land had already been acquired and construction work begun.

[Greasy B]

Thanks Al,

Synopsis excellence.

If I were a couple of years older I would have had the opportunity to vote against the dam, I am forever indebted to those who did. The unlikely events that saved the Meramec started well before the 60’s and 70’s. If I recall correctly this was part of one of the mega rivers and harbors bills that came after the war. At the Time the Bureau of Land Management and the Corp of Engineers were in an all out race to “tame America’s rivers”. I guess the Meramec Basin project must have been a low priority to avoid the first round of dam building. Budget problems during the Korean War brought more delays.

We are indeed fortunate that fate, luck and the hard work of many passionate river advocates prevailed.