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A Rising Lake Puts Corps
in Hot Water
N.D. Struggle Typifies Pressures on Agency
By Michael Grunwald
Monday, September 11, 2000; Page A15
DEVILS LAKE, N.D. –– "I'm a Scandinavian,"
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said softly. "I tend to understate
rather than overstate. So I'm understating
when I tell you: I was outraged."
Conrad was recalling one of his angriest moments in politics:
last June's Army Corps of Engineers decision against building an
emergency outlet to
reduce flooding at Devils Lake in northeastern North Dakota. The
lake was on a slow-motion rampage, climbing 25 feet in six years.
But the Corps had
concluded that the outlet's $110 million cost would far outweigh
its potential benefits.
So Conrad decided to turn up the heat in extremely
un-Scandinavian fashion. He used his Senate privileges to block
all military promotions at the
Corps. He chewed out leaders of the Corps and other agencies.
Conrad, Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Rep. Earl Pomeroy
(D-N.D.) even
demanded and received an audience with President Clinton--just a
few months after they had all supported him during
impeachment--and told him the
outlet was absolutely critical.
In October, the administration announced that the Corps would
work on that outlet after all--even though the project had
repeatedly flunked its
cost-benefit analyses, the Environmental Protection Agency and
Fish and Wildlife Service had serious ecological concerns, and
the outlet proposal had
triggered a diplomatic melee with Canada.
"Look, this lake is putting its fist around the economic
throat of this region," said Dorgan, who has used his seat
on Appropriations to steer money to
the project. "Yes, we met with the president. We met with
everyone. We think this is a very important issue."
The Corps is often under intense pressure to approve projects
that involve some environmental damage, and its military
commanders often agree. But
the war over Devils Lake is a reminder that the civilian leaders
above the Corps are not immune from water politics, either. This
time, the Corps resisted
the pressure--and the administration gave in. In the process, the
long-simmering rivalry between the agency's civilian and military
bosses exploded.
"The politicians have the Corps buffaloed on this one,"
said Gary Pearson, a former Fish and Wildlife Service
veterinarian who volunteers for the
Audubon Society in North Dakota. "At this point, the science
has all been thrown out the window."
Devils Lake is basically a plugged bathtub; it's one of America's
two closed basins, along with the Great Salt Lake. So the only
way for water to escape
the basin is evaporation--unless the lake rises to 1,459 feet
above sea level, when it would pour into the nearby Sheyenne
River and create a historic
flood. That's happened four times in the last 4,000 years.
Now North Dakotans are afraid it could happen again. The tops of
telephone poles and dead oaks are jutting out of the lake like
the arms of drowning
men. The lake has drowned 120,000 acres of land and has climbed
within 12 feet of its tipping point. The federal government has
spent $350 million
moving homes out of its way and raising roads and levees.
Joe Belford, a county commissioner and convenience store owner in
Devils Lake, helped found the Lake Emergency Management Committee
in 1993.
Back then, the problem was that the lake was almost dry, and its
renowned walleye fishery was in danger. But then the water began
to rise; the town of
Devils Lake would be under water today if not for its levee.
Belford's store is right near Minnie H Elementary School--named
for a famous steamboat
that used to dock there--but he says local residents never
expected the lake to return in their lifetimes.
"That lake is a cancer," Belford said. "We never
dreamed it would spread like this."
An outlet to the Sheyenne would lower the lake less than a foot a
year, and federal models calculated that it would reduce the
chance of a natural
overflow only from 2 percent to 1 percent. But the outlet's
supporters say that minute difference makes the insurance policy
worthwhile.
The outlet would pump water from the 3,800-square-mile Devils
Lake basin into the tiny Sheyenne, so downstream residents are
worried about erosion
and flooding problems of their own. Because the lake's water is
far more saline and polluted than the Sheyenne's, environmental
groups are opposed to
the outlet, too. And because the water would then flow up the Red
River into Manitoba, Canadian officials have fought it as well.
Environmentalists say that instead of trying to reroute nature
with an outlet, the government should keep buying out endangered
homeowners and store
more water in the upper basin by restoring some of the 200,000
acres of wetlands that farmers have drained.
But this time, the Corps tried to stand with nature. The agency's
St. Paul District did want to build the outlet, but it was
overruled by the Mississippi
Valley Division, which ruled out an outlet unless the lake rose
another six feet. Several sources believe the division was
carrying water for outlet
opponent Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), one of the Corps'
strongest defenders in Congress. But whatever its motives, the
division held firm: "The
current analysis shows that economic feasibility is lacking, and
. . . a consensus on environmental acceptability would be
extremely difficult to achieve."
Then area residents began sporting T-shirts: "Six More Feet
My Ass." And the North Dakota delegation began applying
pressure around Washington.
Joseph Westphal, the Clinton appointee who oversees the Corps,
had a dozen meetings on his 1999 schedule regarding Devils Lake,
twice as many as
he had for any other project. He eventually ordered Corps
headquarters to take the study away from the Mississippi Valley
Division. And when he tried
to fast-track the project's environmental studies, his
long-running cold war with Gen. Joe Ballard, the recently retired
military commander of the Corps,
turned hot.
"Your order not to provide me with the information I
requested and expected has undermined my effort to resolve the
issue and is unacceptable,"
Westphal e-mailed Ballard. "In case you have any doubt about
the urgency of this matter, the president personally told me that
he wants this issue
resolved."
Ballard's response: "I never once ordered anyone not to give
you anything and deeply resent your implications. You got us into
this mess and you
know it! I will not continue to be the scapegoat for your
bumbling."
Today, the Corps is restudying the outlet. The agency is clearly
nervous about building a $110 million project that could become a
white elephant the
moment the runaway lake begins to recede. But while
conservationists and conservatives have savaged the outlet as a
destructive boondoggle, and GOP
leaders have seized on the project as a case study in political
meddling, the North Dakota delegation is more than willing to
take the abuse.
"If we build this outlet, and then it turns out that the
lake goes down anyway, great," Conrad said. "Nothing
would make me happier."
© 2000 The Washington Post Company