Living River Group

	Living River Group
Explore, enjoy and protect the planet

2011 Missouri River Flood

Birds not the reason for flooding
by Robert Kelly Schneiders

Some Missouri Valley residents are blaming the effort to save the least tern and piping plover from extinction for the present Missouri River flood. These individuals claim the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers held water in the upstream reservoirs this spring to protect the birds and their habitat below Yankton from high flows. They could not be more wrong.
Read more

Another Perspective
by Michael Melius
active member of Sierra Club's Missouri River Network

Since 1986, the Corps has included least terns and piping plovers in its management plans for the dams and reservoirs it calls the System. However, other authorized purposes have such precedence that the System’s operation has rarely, and then only modestly, been adjusted to serve the birds' needs specifically.
Read more

Want to learn more about the Missouri River and team with other Sierrans who care about the river? Sign up for the MR Network, one of the Club's Activist Network teams.

Report Reviewing the Corps of Engineers Operations During the 2011 Flood

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers appointed a panel to conduct an independent technical review of its operations of the reservoir system during the 2011 flood. Click here to see a copy of their report titled "Review of the Regulation of the Missouri River Mainstem Reservoir System During the Flood of 2011."

Position Paper:
Post-Flood Missouri River Management

Living River Group members live and recreate along and on the Wild and Scenic Missouri National Recreational River segments. A position paper giving input to the Corps of Engineers and the National Park Service as they manage the river after the flood has been approved by the Executive Committees of the Living River Group and the South Dakota Chapter and by the Missouri River Working Group. Click here to read the position paper.

Missouri River Compact

When water resources are becoming scarce, the Living River Group suggests that states in the Missouri River Basin should adopt a compact to keep water in the basin.

Is It Time For a Missouri River Compact? - an article by John Davidson in Pines and Prairie

Missouri River could face diversion pressures. States in the river basin need a compact to protect the river - press release by Living River Group about the need for a Missouri River compact

You can contact us by emailing Vikki Fix.

Hike North Alabama Bend
Saturday, May 18
10:00 a.m.

North Alabama Bend is located 2 miles southwest of Vermillion, along the left descending bank of the Missouri River, 2 miles downstream from Clay County Park. The site is within the 59-mile segment of the Missouri National Recreational River and consists of 546 acres of undeveloped land.

Tim Cowman, Director of the Missouri River Institute, will lead us around the parcel and:

Discuss its river-related history, former channels, and steamboat ties.

Point out examples of its ecological and geological characteristics.

Explain the history of the property and its acquisition by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Describe plans for its future management.

Tell us how we can use this public property now and how we can help shape its future.

Directions to meeting place: Take Highway 50 (Main or Cherry) west. Just after crossing the Vermillion River, turn south at the intersection of Highway 50 and Highway 19. Go 1.8 miles south on Highway 19. The parking lot will be on the right (west) side of the road.

2013 Film Series
Vermillion Public Library
7:00 pm

Tuesday, June 18
An Uncommon Curiosity: At Home and in Nature with Bernd Heinrich. Bernd Heinrich, considered by many to be today's finest naturalist author, is followed over the course of a year as he reflects on his past and shares his ideas about nature, science, art, beauty, and writing. In a New York Times book review, David Quammen wrote that Heinrich "is no ordinary biologist. He's the sort who combines formidable scientific rigor with a sense of irony and an unslaked, boyish enthusiasm for his subject...He has a rare ability to embed dense scientific explications within graceful, light-footed nature writing...The mind of Bernd Heinrich is a big antic thing, like a raven, and meant to live outdoors."

Tuesday, July 16
Living Downstream. This follows Sandra Steingraber during one pivotal year as she travels across North America, working to break the silence about cancer and its environmental links. After a routine cancer screening, Sandra receives some worrying results. We begin two journeys with Sandra: her private struggles with cancer and her public quest to bring attention to the urgent human rights issue of cancer prevention. We follow these invisible toxins as they migrate to some of the most beautiful places in North America. We see how these chemicals enter our bodies and how, once inside, scientists believe they may be working to cause cancer.

Tuesday, August 20
Great Plains: America's Lingering Wild. We visit Montana's Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, the Loess Hills of Iowa, and the high plateaus of Texas with photographer Michael Forsberg. The Great Plains helped to grow a country. It helps to feed the world. And, increasingly it is being asked to fuel our energy needs. But now, these same grasslands are among the most altered and least protected regions on Earth. There is growing concern that the wildlife they still harbor and the natural resources we all depend on are being stressed and stretched to their limits.

South Dakota Supreme Court Rejects Appeals of Hyperion Permit

In a 26 page opinion, the South Dakota Supreme Court affirmed the Board Minerals and Environment’s determinations on all counts, rejecting the arguments in our appeal and also rejecting Hyperion’s arguments in its appeal. Click here to read the decision.

Sierra Club, Save Union County and Citizens Opposed to Oil Pollution filed an appeal of the decision of the Board of Minerals and Environment to grant an air permit to Hyperion Energy Center for its oil refinery and power plant. Before the hearing was held, the judge granted a request by Hyperion to reopen the permitting process with the Board of Minerals and Environment (BME). The EPA has found that coker quench water tanks - which Hyperion has designed into its power plant plans - to be a source of emissions at refineries and this was not taken into account in the air permit. Sierra Club, Save Union County, and Citizens Opposed to Oil Pollution wanted the permit to be invalidated and the process to start over. Judge Barnett of the Circuit Court affirmed the BME permit. Citizens has appealed the decision to the SD Supreme Court.

Click here to read the court brief for the appeal, documents sent to the board in a contested case hearing of its decision, the judge's decision, a letter from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to SD environmental officials, and other information about the proposed oil refinery.

Do you want to know what it is like to live near an oil refinery?

"We have a high concentration of cases of asthma and cancer in our area," said Hilton Kelly who lives near Shell's Port Arthur oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. "One in five families has someone who has asthma or cancer." Kelly said many people have developed rashes from chemicals deposited on the skin. "There is a direct correlation between chemicals and illnesses," he said. Read the story this quote is taken from.

Click here for more stories, articles, reports, and photos.

List of activities and accomplishments

List of previous outings.

List of officers