PRINCETON, Iowa — Some things in life feel constant. The mighty Mississippi River certainly seems to fit the bill. That is until you dig a little deeper.
"We've got a lot of challenges on the river," Ed Britton said.
For 28 years, Britton has worked on the river, its islands and all the surrounding habitats. Today, he's the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge District Manager — and what he's seen over the decades is a 'constant' changing course.
"We're seeing tremendous extremes on the river. When I got here 28 years ago, there was a normal, you know. You had a spring flood, it would mellow out in the summertime, in the fall, and you'd have another spring flood," Britton said.
However, those normal habits have been replaced with record-breaking floods followed by record-breaking droughts. Combine that with increased river barge traffic, increased pollution and the loss of tens of thousands of trees along the Mississippi's banks and you've got an extreme situation.
"And we're still trying to figure those extremes out," Britton sighed.
But this is a hopeful story.
Since 1986, Congress has been funding the annual Upper Mississippi River Restoration Program. It allocates millions of dollars to river projects from the Twin Cities to Rock Island and all the way down to St. Louis to restore ecosystems and monitor resources. Those projects are then completed in partnership with the local U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
And the restoration program is getting a big boost in cash. Last year, the three river districts split $33 million for all of their river projects. This year, the program has been upped by Congress to $55 million. And by next year the budget for all three districts will increase to $90 million.
"Folks need to understand how important this is to the river system," Britton said. "This is the program that's really bringing our river system back to be environmentally healthy. Without that, it's being degraded continuously every year. And those degradations are happening much more severely with these extremes."
Since the river restoration program's inception, the Rock Island District has completed 19 projects and has at least seven others currently in the works. Each one requires about six years of planning, research and public input before construction can even begin.
Britton's office has personally led the charge on nine of those undertakings, including one happening at Steamboat Island.
In Pool 14 of the Upper Mississippi River, near Princeton Iowa, years of weather extremes have taken a literal beating on the channel's islands. One in particular, Steamboat Island, has lost 14.2 acres of land to erosion. It's a problem that was only getting worse, according to Britton.
But now, take a boat ride out to Steamboat Island and you'll see a reclamation effort underway — and partially underwater.
The Corps, in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is building a giant U-shaped rock chevron wall around the head of the island. Once completed, it'll wrap around both sides of the island's front, protecting the land from flooding and erosion.
Right now, a team of contractors and construction workers are building up the wall rock by rock. Each bucket-full of stone is lifted from a barge and precisely dropped into GPS-pinpointed spots. It's being built about 100 feet away from the island — almost the exact footprint of where Steamboat used to stretch out to.
"We've designed it to withstand the flood," U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Project Manager Julie Millhollin said. "It kind of dissipates the way we designed it. It's kind of like a pyramid. And then the water will circulate."
Crews are hoping to complete the wall by early December. From there, the next few phases of the project can commence.
Eventually, the channel created between Steamboat Island and the rock chevron will be filled in with dredge material and then trees will be planted on top. It will restore and reclaim all 14.2 acres of lost island. There will also be work done on the middle and backwater channels of Steamboat to help reduce sedimentation buildup, restore wildlife and habitat diversity, protect backwater areas and diversify floodplain forest habitat.
All told, it will be a $33.6 million project.
"This isn't the first island we've done," Britton said. "We're just completing Beaver Island, which is eight miles north of here. We try and go to these larger islands that have the greatest impacts."
Those impacts will be felt not only by the kayakers, fishers and boaters that enjoy the river, but also by the hundreds of land and aquatic wildlife that call the area home. Nesting eagles, pelicans, egrets, cormorants, endangered muscles and a plethora of other fish, reptiles, mammals and waterfowl will all benefit from the project.
"Hopefully we can do these projects before the impacts to the river become so significant that they're beyond what we can rehabilitate," Britton said.
In the near future, the Rock Island Corps District has its eyes on Lower Pool 13 and Green Island.
In the long term, Britton and his team are hopeful the area's Mississippi River can return to the constant so many of us rely on.
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