This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Sign up for our newsletter to get our news straight to your inbox.

At the junction of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, there’s a place called Reno Bottoms, where the Mississippi River spreads out from its main channel into thousands of acres of tranquil backwaters and wetland habitat.

For all its beauty, there’s something unsettling about the landscape, something hard to ignore: hundreds of the trees growing along the water are dead.

Billy Reiter-Marolf, a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, calls it the boneyard. It’s a popular spot for hunting, fishing and paddling, so people have begun to take notice of the abundance of tall, leafless stumps pointing to the sky.

“Visitors ask me, ‘What’s going on, what’s happening here?’” Reiter-Marolf said. “It just looks so bad.”

Floodplain forests play a pivotal role in the river ecosystem – creating wildlife habitat, improving water quality, storing carbon and slowing flooding.

But they’re disappearing.

As their name indicates, these forests generally withstand flooding, which happens on the Mississippi every year. In the last few decades, though, they’ve been swamped with high water from long-lasting floods, soaking the trees more than they can stand and causing mass die-offs. And once those taller trees die, sun-loving grasses take over the understory in thick mats that make it nearly impossible for new trees to grow.

Even before high water began to take its toll, the Upper Mississippi River floodplain had lost nearly half of its historical forest cover due to urban and agricultural land use, as well as changes to the way the water flowed after locks and dams were installed in the 1930s. A similar tale is true along the lower Mississippi.

The recent losses are worrying to scientists and land managers – especially since climate change will make extreme flooding a more frequent threat.

There’s money available to make a dent in the problem. The challenge is finding the right solution before things get much worse.

“It’s really difficult to say, ‘Why here? What caused this?’” said Andy Meier, a forester with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “How do you restore it, being confident you won’t just have the same thing happen again?”

High waters hit floodplain forests

The forests on the upper river were historically made up of maple, ash and elm trees. That began to change with the onset of Dutch elm disease, first discovered in the U.S. in the 1930s. Several decades later, the emerald ash borer began to kill ash trees.

“All you’re left with is the maple,” said Bruce Henry, a forest ecologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service. “The maple gets hit with a flood, and you know, boom chicka. You’ve got a big dead forest.”

Most places on the river don’t look as bad as Reno Bottoms. There are still many trees in the floodplain, and the average person may not notice that much is wrong.

But losses can add up quickly. According to a 2022 report on ecological trends on the upper Mississippi, forest cover along the stretch of the river from Minnesota down to Clinton, Iowa had decreased by roughly 6% between 1989 and 2010. Its next segment, which bottoms out before St. Louis, had lost about 4% of forest in that time.

In some spots, those losses have escalated. Along the river between Bellevue and Clinton, Iowa, for example, forest cover dropped nearly 18% between 2010 and 2020, said Nathan De Jager, who researches the upper river’s floodplain forests for the U.S. Geological Survey.

Though it was a wet decade overall, a massive flood in 2019 caused the majority of damage, particularly in areas where the river forms the border between Wisconsin and northern Iowa, De Jager said. That flood was unusual not just for its intensity but for its duration – some trees were partly submerged for 100 days or more.

In 2020, when Reiter-Marolf was conducting a forest inventory in a stretch of floodplain near Harpers Ferry, Iowa, 35% of the trees there were dead.

It’s pretty clear that excess water is causing forest loss, De Jager said. What exactly is driving the high water isn’t as well sorted out.

But climate change, as well as changes in agricultural and urban land use, are likely factors. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which can produce more intense rainfall. And that water is running off the landscape faster than it used to. One example De Jager gave is the use of drainage tiles – networks of underground pipes that suck excess water out of soil. The practice can increase crop yields for farmers, but it also sends water more quickly to the nearest river or stream. 

High water is hurting forests at both ends of the life cycle, killing adult trees as well as the seedlings struggling to grow up in the understory. And it’s triggered some other unexpected consequences, too – when the water is high, beavers can reach parts of trees they weren’t tall enough to gnaw off before.

Add to that the threats of tree diseases and invasive plants, and the distress signals are clear.

“It’s hard to pinpoint which of these stressors are the most important ones,” said Lyle Guyon, a terrestrial ecologist at the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center. “But the fact that we’ve got so many of them piled on top of each other, all happening at the same time, is certainly not helping.”

Forest loss degrades habitat, water quality, flood control

Unlike the wildfires that burn through forests and homes out west, forest loss in the Mississippi River floodplain doesn’t impact very many people’s day-to-day lives, Meier said.

But it is impacting the many creatures that call that floodplain home.

In the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley – the historic floodplain of the lower river – a 2020 study estimated that about 30% of today’s land cover is forest, which used to be continuous across the valley. Loretta Battaglia, director of the Center for Coastal Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, said wildlife species loss illustrates the damage.

Battaglia, a Louisiana native who has studied forest restoration in the river valley, pointed to the ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird that once lived in the valley’s floodplain forests but is now considered by many to be extinct.

“The loss of this forest played a huge role in the extinction of that bird that needed a lot of area to fly around and do its thing,” Battaglia said.

The once-endangered Louisiana black bear faced the same hardship, she said, after deforestation fragmented the long stretches of floodplain forest it preferred to roam in.

Beyond providing habitat, trees in the floodplain also capture pollutants that would otherwise run into the river – a critical role along the Mississippi, which suffers from excess nitrogen and phosphorus that collects in the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

The forests along the uppermost parts of the river usually don’t act as flood buffers because there isn’t much private property that abuts them, but that changes downriver in Iowa and Illinois, where big levees protect profitable farmland and towns from the river’s whims.

A study in the Journal of the American Water Resources Association found that the ability of forests to slow water played a big role in reducing levee damage on the lower Missouri River, which feeds into the Mississippi, during the river’s historic 1993 flood. More than 40% of levee failures during the flood occurred in segments of the floodplain with no “woody corridor,” as the study describes it, and nearly 75% occurred in segments where the woody corridor was less than 300 feet wide.

“The federal government could potentially save millions of dollars through management of floodplain forests,” the study’s authors wrote in their conclusion.

It’s unlikely that forest cover along the river will ever return to its original levels, Meier said. For all the usefulness it provides, though, he said “we need to do everything we can” to maintain what’s there now.

How to do that, though, can be a hard question to answer.

Restoration efforts are a learning process

On a hot day in early June, Meier and fellow Army Corps foresters Sara Rother and Lewis Wiechmann planted small trees on Goose Island in La Crosse County. Mud squelched under their feet – a reminder that the river had flooded to near-record levels a month earlier – and cottonwood seeds fell from above like snowflakes.

By Meier’s estimate, none of the falling seeds would successfully grow to be adult trees. The site had too much competing vegetation, much of it reed canary grass, an aggressive species with a thick root layer that prevents trees from being able to establish in the soil.

The young trees they planted, honey locust and river birch, can handle more flooding than some other tree species. Deciding what to plant at each site is a careful calculation of how much water could pool there, how much sun it gets and which animals could potentially come through and chomp away their hard work.

Much of the time, Meier said, it’s trial and error.

A U.S. Geological Survey effort could help eliminate some of that uncertainty. Scientists have modeled flood inundation decades into the future to see which swathes of floodplain forest could thrive, and conversely, which ones will get too wet to survive.

De Jager’s team recently completed modeling for Reno Bottoms. Next year, the Army Corps and other agencies will begin a $37 million habitat restoration project to rehabilitate forests in the area.

The project, funded with federal dollars from the Upper Mississippi River Restoration program, includes close to 550 acres of forest restoration, clearing away aggressive vegetation from the understory and planting new trees. It also includes more than 50 acres where agency staff will raise the elevation of an island to give trees a fighting chance at withstanding future floods.

A little boost in elevation makes a huge difference in the floodplain, Henry said. That’s what they’re betting on.

Now seems to be a good time to do the work. Interest is growing in forest restoration, Meier said, and along with it, funding. In addition to the Reno Bottoms project, the Army Corps and the Fish and Wildlife Service have their own budgets to spend on tree planting, including millions from the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year.

The hard part, of course, is that working with trees is a long game. It could be 20, 50 or 100 years before the seedlings growing today become the mature forests of tomorrow – and in that time, the river could change, too.

It means that foresters will have to work with precision, but also with a little hope that they’re on the right track.

“You don’t really know what the result’s going to be,” Henry said. “You’re setting things in action that you’re not going to see the fruit of.”

The Mississippi River’s floodplain forests are dying. The race is on to bring them back. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story is part of the series A Changing Basin from the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk. Take a quick survey and let us know how extreme weather is affecting you.

Masks made a comeback in Wisconsin this week. 

As smoke from Canadian wildfires blanketed the state, health officials urged people to wear face coverings – previously worn en masse to reduce transmission of COVID-19 – if they had to spend time outdoors. This time, they blocked out smoke particles. 

At Madison’s Pinney Library staff handed out N95 masks. The building was busy Wednesday, especially the children’s section, in part because poor air quality had caused the school district to cancel summer school and community recreation programs for the day.

“After COVID, this seems like another big thing that we haven’t experienced before,” said library page Nancie Cotter. “It’s almost a little scary.” 

The lingering presence of wildfire smoke has made for an unusual start to summer across the Midwest. It also comes during a near-record drought crisping fields across the Corn Belt and the threat of hotter summers to come. 

Many have thought of the region as a climate haven, rich with water resources and shielded from sea level rise and powerful hurricanes.

This summer is clouding that picture. 

“When we think of both climate and air quality, we often think of it as something that happens to other people,” said Tracey Holloway, a professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. “As climate changes, it’s changing everything for everyone.” 

Smoke deluge catches people by surprise

Forecasters say a perfect storm of factors have caused the smoke to settle over the Midwest, including atmospheric conditions. The way Canada manages its wildfires also plays a part. 

And the changing climate is bringing higher temperatures, periods of drought and more volatile winds that yield wildfires that burn faster and stronger than before. They also start earlier in the year. 

The severity of the problem over the past month has been a shock to the public, curbing much-anticipated summer activities. In Minneapolis in mid-June, the city’s air quality was among the worst in the world. When another wave of smoke washed over the city at the end of the month, beaches around Cedar Lake – normally packed on summer afternoons – were deserted.

“In most people’s lifetimes, this is the worst it has been,” said Matt Taraldsen, who supervises a team of air quality forecasters and researchers at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

Smaller smoke incursions from Canada in 2018 and 2021 gave forecasters indications of what was to come – but nothing compares to this summer. The only real analogue stretches back over a century, Taraldsen said, when a series of fires in 1918 ripped across northeastern Minnesota, roughly from Bemidji to Duluth.

Minnesota officials have been offering advice to colleagues in several surrounding states, which had not had the experience of warning the public in recent years about smoke, Taraldsen said. But even if Minnesota had a head start in refining its public communication, the actual predictions are posing a major technical challenge.

The American, Canadian, UK and European weather models used by forecasters don’t always show with fine detail how air is moving between different levels of the atmosphere, making it hard to guess whether choking smoke will be pushed to the ground, or held harmlessly aloft.

The smoke and its effects have surprised people. Mark Hayward, an arts performer from Madison, said he nearly had to cut short a yo-yo performance at the iconic Milwaukee music festival Summerfest because he couldn’t stop coughing. 

“It’s nuts,” Hayward said. “I have family in southern California, but I never thought I’d have to deal with this in the Midwest.”

Experts say Midwest won’t be a climate ‘haven’

Though it’s not clear yet how much smoke the region will have to contend with in summers to come, other indicators of climate change are emerging. 

“Weather whiplash,” as Wisconsin state climatologist Steve Vavrus described the events of the past six months, is one. 

The Mississippi River flooded to near-record levels this spring. Now, much of the Midwest is gripped by drought, setting farmers on edge during the growing season. 

In Illinois and Iowa, which together produce more than a quarter of the nation’s corn and soybeans, at least 90% of those plants face drought conditions. Arid conditions are expected to persist through September. 

Climate models predict more extreme jumps like this between wet and dry periods, Vavrus said. Volatility is something the public will have to get used to. 

Future summer temperatures are a little less certain. Although summers in the Midwest aren’t heating up as fast as other parts of the country, the region is still likely to see more extremely hot days. That will be exacerbated in places like Milwaukee, which suffers from the urban heat island effect, which happens when large cities hold in more heat than surrounding areas.

Cities around the Great Lakes are often floated as climate destinations – places where people imagine they’ll be safe from the worst impacts of the changing climate. In some senses, that will remain true. The lakes won’t dry up, wildfires don’t burn here like they do in California, and hurricanes that strike the south hard usually show up as just a little rain.

But the region isn’t immune. Anna Haines, who leads a subcommittee of the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts focused on climate migration, said her group favors throwing out the term “haven” to describe Midwest climate. 

“When you look up the definition, it’s a shelter, a refuge … a safe place,” said Haines, also the director of the Center for Land Use Education at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. “We don’t think that is correct.”

Bennet Goldstein of Wisconsin Watch contributed to this story. 

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Sign up for our newsletter to get our news straight to your inbox.

Midwest states, often billed as climate havens, suffer summer of smoke, drought, heat is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story is part of the series A Changing Basin from the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk. Take a quick survey and let us know how extreme weather is affecting you.

Smoke from Canadian wildfires that turned skies along the East Coast a sickly yellow also brought air quality alerts to much of the Midwest this week. State health departments cautioned people with heart and lung conditions to reduce outdoor exposure.

It’s likely more days of bad air will come — not only are fires burning in the west in Alberta and Saskatchewan, and in the east in Quebec, but new blazes have erupted in Ontario, directly north of Minnesota, according to Minnesota Pollution Control Agency air quality meteorologist David Brown. The next plume could arrive Friday.

“We’re kind of surrounded at this point. Any wind direction is likely going to bring some smoke now,” Brown said.

In mid-May, sustained winds blew wildfire smoke in from the West, then a few slow-moving weather systems brought stagnant air that triggered ozone advisories.

“It’s been a very unique spring,” said Craig Czarnecki, outreach coordinator for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resource’s air management program.

Climate experts say that as the planet continues to warm, this kind of spring will become less and less of an anomaly. In the process, air quality will continue to worsen, as will its impact on human health.

The largest fires have historically been concentrated in the West, and though there are examples of damaging fires elsewhere, wildfire scientists assumed the eastern part of the continent was immune from the worst effects, said Erica Smithwick, director of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute at Penn State.

That’s proving untrue.

Higher temperatures, periods of drought and more volatile winds are yielding wildfires that burn faster and stronger than before, Smithwick said. Wildfire season is also getting longer, as rivers in the West dry out sooner and the East sees stronger storms mixed with drought. Some scientists question whether the whole idea of a wildfire season still applies.

“I’ve studied wildfires for decades, and I’m quite alarmed by the changes that we’re seeing to the wildfire systems,” Smithwick said.

The severity of the fires is even affecting how far their smoke can travel. Smithwick said the stronger the blaze, the higher into the atmosphere the smoke can waft, being picked up by winds that travel long distances and ultimately push it into places it wouldn’t normally go.

Air pollution worsens respiratory, heart problems

Fine particulate matter, also known as PM2.5, is one of the main pollutants released from wildfire smoke, which are so tiny they “penetrate pretty deep into our lungs and get into our bloodstream,” according to Katelyn O’Dell, a researcher at George Washington University.

Hotter summers are also making stagnant air days more frequent, according to an analysis from Climate Central, a nonprofit news organization that analyzes and reports on climate science. During those stagnation events, pollutants like ozone get trapped and make breathing more difficult.

Both fine particles from wildfire smoke and ozone can cause respiratory issues like coughing, difficulty breathing and aggravated asthma. People doing physical activity outdoors, particularly those who already suffer from respiratory problems, will usually find it harder to do.

On top of that, PM2.5 can have more dramatic effects because the particles are small enough to get deep into the lungs and even the bloodstream.

“Particulate matter is one of the most well-studied types of air pollution, and it is incredibly dangerous to the body,” said Dr. Neelu Tummala, a clinical assistant professor of surgery and co-director of the Climate and Health Institute at George Washington University.

While short-term exposure typically results in respiratory concerns, chronic exposure brings worsening impacts like increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke, Tummala said.

For Black, brown and low-income communities, which already bear a higher burden of air pollution, the recent short-term exposures could further elevate their risk.

Both fine particle and ozone exposure can also result in pregnancy complications like preterm births and babies with low birth weights, Tummala said.

And a 2021 study in the journal Pediatrics found that the particles in that smoke are 10 times more harmful to children’s respiratory health than other types of air pollution. Smithwick, who is also a representative of the Science Moms campaign, said kids are vulnerable because they are more active, play outside more and are still growing.

“We’re definitely going to be seeing this play out in our health systems for many years to come,” she said.

Protect yourself from dirty air

Pay attention to air quality. The Air Quality Index, or AQI, measures risk from dirty air on a scale of 0 to 500. The AQI doesn’t measure the amount of a specific pollutant but generally reflects health impact.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow site offers real-time readings of AQI and also shows where fires are burning and where smoke is wafting. Purple Air, a company that makes air sensors, also has a network of AQI sensor readings at map.purpleair.com.

People should start paying attention at the orange category of AQI — readings between 101 and 150. That’s when sensitive groups like children, the elderly and those with breathing or heart conditions can encounter problems, said Brown.

He added that relatively healthy people might start to feel headaches or chest tightness at the higher end of orange readings.

In the red category from 151 to 200 AQI, all people, regardless of health, may start to feel effects; the purple category from 201 to 300 is considered very unhealthy; and maroon readings of 301 or higher are hazardous.

Avoid time outdoors when the air is bad. Jesse Berman, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health, said it’s safest to stay inside with windows closed and air conditioning on. In a car, run the air conditioner set to re-circulate in the interior of the vehicle, he said.

Put those N95 masks back on. For those who have to be outside for work or commuting, try to relocate tasks or reschedule them, reduce strenuous activity, take breaks in a place free of smoke, and wear a well-fitting mask designed to filter out small particles, like an N95.

The Centers for Disease Control warns, however, that N95 masks are not made to fit children and will not work effectively to protect them from smoke.

Filter your indoor air. In the home, air purifiers with high-quality HEPA filters can help remove pollution that sneaks inside, Berman said.

It may also be worth switching out the filter on a home HVAC system. Airflow filters with a higher MERV rating, an industry measurement of how effective the screen is in capturing small particles, can also help. The Environmental Protection Agency recommends MERV 13 or higher.

Berman warned, though, that tighter filters can clog more quickly and may need to be changed more often. For a cheaper option, O’Dell recommended creating one at home with some filters taped to the four edges of a box fan — a do-it-yourself method known as a Corsi-Rosenthal box.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Sign up for our newsletter to get our news straight to your inbox.

Wildfire smoke is new hazard in upper Midwest is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Sign up for our newsletter to get our news straight to your inbox.

Around 175 million tons of freight travels on the Mississippi River each year, and from the river’s headwaters to southern Illinois, a series of locks and dams guide barges through the journey.

Traffic is only increasing, but the locks and dams have aged far past their life expectancy. Even functioning properly, they slow barges down, and shippers and commodity groups fear a worse infrastructure breakdown is on the horizon. 

“Is it a matter of if you have a failure … or when you have a failure?” said Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition.

Steenhoek likened the system to a fire hydrant hooked up to a garden hose. Since the locks and dams were built almost a century ago, farmers are producing significantly more corn and soybeans for export.  

Those commodities are loaded up on barges and pushed by towboats, which must enter each lock as they make their way along the river. The locks allow the boats to gradually adjust to changing river levels. Most towboats can push 15 barges at a time on the river. But when those barges reach a 600-foot long lock, they don’t fit. Instead, they have to be split up, which takes more than twice as long.

Those delays keep growing. A 2019 Agribusiness Consulting report found that in 2017, more than half of boats and barges on the river were delayed at locks and dams, up from about one in five in 2000. Delay time increased from 90 minutes to about 122 minutes, some of the longest delays in the country.  

Steenhoek said farmers ultimately foot the bill. If shipping companies face slowdowns on the river that cost them more in fuel, they’ll lower the price they’re willing to pay farmers for the product. 

Almost everyone involved can agree that something needs to be done about the locks and dams, which have an estimated billion-dollar backlog of maintenance costs. 

Yet with so many varied interests, the question of who should pay – and what exactly to pay for – isn’t as easy to answer. 

“We’re doing repairs … to keep it operational,” said Kristin Moe, navigation business line manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ St. Paul District. “But at some point, we’re going to need some major rehabilitation of these structures.” 

Locks and dams far past expected lifespan 

As the Midwest’s agricultural and manufacturing economies developed in the 20th century, it

became increasingly hard to move goods on the upper river, which at times was so shallow that people could walk across it. As early as the 1830s, there was interest in controlling the river’s whims to give commercial traffic easier passage. 

In 1930, Congress approved a project that would ultimately create the current system of 29 locks and dams that stretches from Minneapolis to Granite City, Illinois. The upper river is divided into sections called pools, where a fixed amount of river is held back by a dam. The Army Corps controls how much water is in a pool at a given time, which must be at least nine feet deep to allow barges to move through. 

Between the headwaters in northern Minnesota and Granite City, the river falls about 420 feet in elevation. Each lock acts like an elevator, bringing boats up or down to the water level of the next pool. 

The lower river does not have locks and dams. As major rivers like the Missouri and the Ohio join up with the Mississippi, the channel becomes deep and wide enough to naturally accommodate shipping. 

At the time that the locks and dams were constructed – mostly between 1930 and 1940 – engineers estimated their lifespan to be about 50 years. Today, they’re pushing 100 years old.

If the upper Mississippi River had to shut down for one season because of lock and dam failures, the amount of agricultural goods displaced would equal between 367,000 and 489,000 loads by truck, according to a 2018 study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Turning to other modes like trucks and rail could be costly.

And as the infrastructure ages, there’s also another piece of uncertainty to contend with: the changing climate, which brings with it more weather extremes. Last fall, intense drought halted barge traffic on the lower Mississippi River, and this spring, widespread flooding on the upper river did the same thing. 

“Having this pendulum swing … it’s very jarring to anyone who uses the system,” Steenhoek said. 

Those changes make it even more important to do preventative maintenance of the locks and dams, he said. 

Groups disagree on what projects to fund

Taxpayers have been funding inland waterway navigation for nearly two centuries, but Congress established the Inland Waterways Trust Fund in 1978, which required the private shipping industry to pitch in. 

Today, the trust fund’s coffers are filled by a 29-cent per gallon diesel tax on commercial operators that use the Mississippi River and other inland waterways. New construction is paid for through a public-private partnership: the private dollars in the fund, which cover 35%, and federal dollars, which contribute 65%. 

But once the projects are completed, it’s taxpayers who pick up the tab for maintenance and repairs through federal funds. Thus the debate becomes not only who pays, but what projects should be paid for.

“We don’t need new waterways infrastructure,” said Olivia Dorothy of American Rivers. “We don’t need new dams. We don’t need new locks. We don’t need new stuff. We need to maintain the stuff that we have.” 

American Rivers has long advocated for private industry to pay for maintenance, given that it’s directly benefiting. 

The Inland Waterways Trust Fund is the most successful effort in Dorothy’s eyes, but it doesn’t require the industry to pay for maintenance, which is the biggest expense. That includes a long list of backlogged projects, like repairing concrete walls and replacing gates. American Rivers argues that the companies using the waterway the most should pay the most to maintain it, similar to the highway funding model, which leverages fuel taxes, vehicle registration fees and other fees. 

Those who represent shippers – like the Waterways Council, a public policy group that advocates for an efficient inland waterways system – disagree. Deb Calhoun, the group’s senior vice president, said the system should be modernized so that every lock has a 1,200-foot chamber, which would allow today’s larger tows to move up and downriver faster. 

Federal infrastructure law funding will pay for at least one of those larger chambers, at Lock 25 in Winfield, Missouri. It’s the first lock chamber project to be funded from an Army Corps effort to address navigation concerns along with environmental ones. 

Because the amount of goods traveling on the river is expected to increase, money shouldn’t be spent on rehabbing existing structures, but instead on building new ones, Calhoun said. 

The Waterways Council is opposed to additional toll or lockage fees for shippers that use the river. Calhoun said it’s not just shippers who benefit from an efficient river. 

“The Mississippi River is a natural gift to the U.S., and it has beneficiaries like recreational boating and fishing, waterfront property development, and water for manufacturing processes,” she said. “None of those beneficiaries pay for the dedicated fuel tax.” 

Proposed funding model would have shippers pay up front 

Amid disagreements over funding, one proposal by an Iowa State University professor puts a spin on the public-private partnership model, asking shippers to foot some of the bill up front for lock and dam repairs in return for easier passage on the river.

Yoshinori Suzuki, the school’s Land O’Lakes Endowed Professor of supply chain management, argues that the up-front payment would skirt the prohibition of river tolls in a study published in January in Transportation Journal. 

Suzuki ran simulations of upper Mississippi River traffic flows through a mathematical model to figure out how much shippers would have to pay to get the highest return on their investment. If they covered between 60 and 80% of the cost, he found, they could maximize their investment and be paid back in eight years or less. 

Suzuki said his model is already of interest to shippers. The study was paid for by Iowa State’s Supply Chain Forum, which includes corporate partners like Land O’Lakes, Cargill and Kent Corporation. Suzuki said companies are “deeply concerned” with the aging system, and that they were interested in the idea even before he presented the results. 

“Most, if not all, are very willing to provide funding to this kind of project as long as the investment comes back in positive return,” he said. 

Land O’Lakes and Kent Corporation did not respond to a request for comment about the study findings. A spokesperson for Cargill said the company had not yet been presented with the research. 

Suzuki acknowledged that there’s a lot left to figure out before his proposal could be put into action, like who would ultimately approve such a funding model and which entity would be in charge of spending the money. 

The model also relies on all shippers who use the river pitching in, which could take significant convincing. Calhoun, with the Waterways Council, said she felt doubtful it would come to pass. 

Moe said the Corps is open to partnerships that could help them explore more innovative ways to fund repairs, including a public-private one. 

And in the meantime, they’ll keep chipping away. 

“It’s just a matter of, can the funds keep up with this growing maintenance backlog?” she said. “This aging infrastructure is getting older every day.”

Mississippi River shipping infrastructure is aging. Who should pay for the repairs? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Sign up for our newsletter to get our news straight to your inbox.

A very wet winter is bringing major spring flooding along the upper Mississippi River. In some communities, the floodwaters are among the top three on record. 

The swollen Big Muddy is overtopping some upriver locks, spilling over roads and soaking fields, parks and businesses. Though the water is expected to crest and start receding in most places by next week, its impacts will linger. 

As of Thursday morning, the National Weather Service had issued 58 flood warnings in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Missouri.

Each spring, the river expands when snow melts across the upper basin. But this year, the snow was often heavy and wet, and a string of unseasonably warm days at the beginning of April kicked off a massive melt. 

For many who live and work along the river, this spring’s flooding is reminiscent of major floods of the past. The upper river flooded to its highest levels ever in 1965, and its second-highest in 2001. 

In Camanche, Iowa, 84-year-old Jack Murphy helped stack sandbags in his backyard to protect his home, once again, from a flooding Mississippi River. It’s a routine he and his wife, Willa, 81, have been through numerous times. 

“You don’t sleep at night,” Murphy said about living so close to the rising river. Every morning like clockwork, he wakes around 4 a.m. and checks the water levels. Local students and volunteers are helping him build his sandbag barrier.

The Mississippi River at Camanche is projected to crest around 23 feet by Monday — ranking in the top three highest peaks in the town’s history. Many tributaries are also flooding. 

Willa Murphy called it “scary.” 

“You think it’s not going to happen, and then all of a sudden everything lets loose, and you’ve got to hurry up and do something,” she said. 

There are no Mississippi River flood warnings in the lower basin yet. Forecasters say the likelihood of downstream flooding is low, since the Missouri and Ohio rivers – which supply most of the flow into the lower basin – are not flooding. 

Dry fall prevented spring floods from being even worse 

After the early April warmth melted nearly 80% of the upper basin’s snowpack in just three days, forecasters feared river flooding would surpass 2001 levels and even creep close to 1965, said Jordan Wendt, service hydrologist for the National Weather Service in La Crosse, Wisconsin. 

But last year’s drought across the Midwest left the ground drier and ready to suck up some of that water. It took three days of melting for soils to become saturated, Wendt said. 

Still, some areas were hit hard – including where the Wisconsin River feeds into the Mississippi near where Wisconsin and Illinois border with Iowa. So much water was rushing in from the smaller river that it was essentially forming a small lake where the water waited until it could flow down the Mississippi, Wendt said. 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sent a team of engineers down to nearby McGregor and Marquette, Iowa, to help them manage their flood response, said Patrick Moes, deputy public affairs chief for the Corps’ St. Paul District. The river is expected to crest there at about 23 feet. 

Wendt said most locations should fall back under flood stage at the end of the first week of May, and the river should be back near its banks by the middle of that month. 

Until then, though, residents will have to deal with high water. 

On low-lying French Island, which sits between the Black and Mississippi Rivers in La Crosse County, rising waters led a few people to voluntarily evacuate their homes, Town of Campbell fire chief Nate Melby said Wednesday. 

The town received large pumps from the Army Corps to drive water out of neighborhoods, a strategy that has been working, Melby said. During the 2001 flood, 70 homes on the southern part of the island were flooded with three to four feet of water. This time around, they’ve been able to keep the water down, he said. 

The river crested in La Crosse Wednesday evening at just below 16 feet. Even when the floodwaters recede, the community will have a tough job ahead cleaning up mud and debris the river left behind. But Melby said he’s encouraged by the way they came together to respond. 

“You see the best in people in those times,” he said. 

Flooding curbs barge and road transportation 

The Army Corps has closed 18 locks and dams from the Twin Cities to Illinois because of high water levels, halting barge traffic during the river’s busy spring shipping season. 

Some of them, like Lock and Dam 4 in Alma, Wisconsin, closed because the water has overtopped the lock chamber where boats typically pass through, Moes said. Others closed because the rushing current was pushing barges too close to the dam. 

“I’ve been here 13 years and I’ve never experienced the amount of closures we’re dealing with this year,” Moes said. “It’s truly a historic flood.” 

A few locks and dams may open again April 29, but that will ultimately depend on the flood conditions, he said. 

Since there’s no detour for barges that use the river, they’ll have to wait for waters to begin to recede before getting goods moving again. 

The river is flooding roads, too. 

On Monday, floodwaters spilled onto Wisconsin Highway 35 and into downtown Fountain City, about 45 minutes upriver from La Crosse on the scenic Great River Road. 

The city declared a state of emergency after a flood barrier on the highway broke loose. 

Buffalo County Sheriff Mike Osmond said the main impact to the community will be a financial one, particularly the restaurants and taverns that line the river road. Local law enforcement is still diverting traffic from the area, though Osmond said the river crested Tuesday night and should now begin to recede.

The road hasn’t flooded since 2001, he said. 

Fountain City Mayor Gwen Katula said she was uneasy in the days prior as projections of how bad the flood would be waffled. 

“You don’t want to stir up your community in alarm, but you need to make them aware of what’s going on,” she said. “As predictions went up, it was somewhat dreadful.” 

The historic Black Hawk Bridge that joins Lansing, Iowa to Wisconsin closed Tuesday so local officials could inspect the integrity of the dike connected to it. In 2017, a Lansing resident was killed because of a washout on the same stretch of road. 

“They’re trying to make sure nothing like that ever happens again,” said Lansing Mayor Melissa Hammell. 

The bridge is the only place to cross the Mississippi between La Crosse and Prairie du Chien, which are almost 60 miles apart. With it closed, some people who live and work on different sides of the river are facing a much longer commute. 

A city park and baseball diamond in Lansing were flooded, and the local food pantry had to evacuate its building in a low-lying area. High school students helped pantry staff distribute items once it relocated to safer ground, Hammell said. 

The community is eager for the river to crest – estimated at about 19.7 feet – and for cleanup to begin so they can prepare for summer tourist season, she said.

Flooding impacts should diminish further downriver unless those communities get a lot of rain, said Colin Wellenkamp, executive director of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative. 

He said the group will be tracking water levels closely in the St. Louis region, where the Missouri and Illinois rivers join the Mississippi. 

Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco contributed to this story. This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and the Society of Environmental Journalists, funded by the Walton Family Foundation. 

Mississippi River floodwaters swamp upper Midwest is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Sign up for our newsletter to get our news straight to your inbox.

Heavy, wet snow that pounded upper Wisconsin and Minnesota is expected to cause flooding this spring along the upper Mississippi River, and it could be considerable.

The National Weather Service released a spring flooding outlook Thursday, saying the risk is “much above normal.”

The prediction is driven almost entirely by heavy snowfall. The upper Midwest was walloped with such storm systems, especially over the last six weeks.

Snow in the region has been wetter than usual this winter, which means an abnormally high amount of water is trapped in the snowpack and ready to melt, said Jordan Wendt, service hydrologist for the National Weather Service in La Crosse. 

Many inches of water are stored in the snowpack covering the basins of the St. Croix, Chippewa and Wisconsin rivers — which drain into the Mississippi. “If it all melted at once, it would be the equivalent of getting eight inches of rain at once,” he said. 

Though the Midwest and Great Plains experienced drought last summer, slowing down commerce on the Mississippi, rain and snowfall have brought the river and its tributaries back to normal levels, Wendt said. And frost depth, which affects how much water can soak into the ground before it starts running off of it, is shallower than normal.

Along the river as it flows out of the Twin Cities, some sites currently have more than a 50% chance of seeing major flooding over the next 90 days, according to the Weather Service flood outlook. As it flows south and forms the border with Wisconsin, some sites have more than a 50% chance of seeing moderate flooding. 

The last time the river’s mainstem saw a similar flood outlook was in 2019, when long-lasting floodwaters caused an estimated $20 billion in damage to public and private property and crop losses, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Many spots along the river were at or above flood stage for most of that year, an unusual occurrence.

If the snow melts steadily and the region doesn’t get more snow, or rain, Wendt said the risk of flooding will decrease.  But the snow needs to melt slowly, giving the river time to move the extra water.

On the flip side, the worst-case scenario would be rapid warming. If colder temperatures stick around and the snowpack stays until April, it’s more likely to be melted quickly by a string of 50- or 60-degree days, which could also be punctuated by extra precipitation from a thunderstorm, Wendt said.  

It’s likely that the region will experience below-normal temperatures for the next few weeks, according to National Weather Service data. 

While significant Mississippi River flooding could occur, the flood risk is near normal for tributaries in Wisconsin and Minnesota that lead to the river, according to the outlook, and could be lower than normal in Iowa tributaries. 

The Mississippi is more likely to flood because it drains such a vast region, with more than 21,000 miles of other rivers joining it by the time it reaches Dubuque, Iowa. If all that water makes its way south, flood control measures could be activated along portions of the river to protect cities and towns. In Louisiana, the Army Corps could open two spillways to relieve the swollen river, which can have wide-ranging ecological impacts. 

Flooding events on the Mississippi River typically unfold slowly, Wendt said, and it’s likely that the river won’t reach flood stage in the La Crosse area until late April or early May.

That gives surrounding communities time to prepare, but everyone should be monitoring the situation, he said.

“It’s almost not a question of whether or not we do flood, but how severe it’ll be,” Wendt said. 

Heavy, wet snow brings spring flooding risk to northern Wisconsin and Minnesota is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Sign up for our newsletter to get our news straight to your inbox.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Ryan Westpfahl’s name. The Desk apologizes for the error. 

This winter has already brought significant snowfall to much of the U.S. Historically, more snow has meant more road salt. It’s an effective way to clear roads — but also brings cascading environmental impacts as it washes into rivers and streams. 

But amid one powerful winter storm that walloped the Midwest in December, employees from the La Crosse County Facilities Department in Wisconsin did something a little different. 

As usual, they clocked into work well before dawn to plow the county’s downtown parking lots. They were followed by facilities director Ryan Westpfahl, who walked each of the lots, checking for slick spots. Finding none, he didn’t lay any salt down on top. 

That’s a major departure from how he would have handled the situation a few years ago – before their department made the decision to dramatically cut back on salt use to prevent it from flowing into waters like the nearby Mississippi River, which new data show has been growing saltier for decades.

Under the previous protocol, in Westpfahl’s words, his crew would have “salted the crap” out of the lots after a snowfall like this, without giving deference to whether they actually needed it. Today, there’s a careful calculation after each time it snows to ensure they’re using just the right amount of salt. 

Westpfahl acknowledged that the new way isn’t faster, nor is it easier. If a half-inch of snow falls today, for example, a handful of employees will take a few hours to plow the lots, versus the one employee who could have thrown salt down in an hour. 

But he said the extra time is worth it. 

“There’s pretty good evidence that if we continue to use salt at the rate we do now, it’s going to be detrimental to the rivers and lakes eventually,” Westpfahl said. “We need to do something about it now.” 

The use of road salt during winter is nothing new for people across the Midwest, particularly in its upper stretches where the presence of snow and ice can linger from December into April. But there’s growing awareness of the harm it can cause to freshwater resources – wreaking havoc on aquatic life, disrupting ecosystems, making its way into groundwater and corroding pipes. 

New data reveal that levels of chloride – one of the elements that make up salt – have increased by more than a third since the late 1980s across the entire Upper Mississippi River basin, which extends from the river’s headwaters in Minnesota to southern Illinois. Reported increases are even higher at monitoring sites in Wisconsin and Minnesota. And the problem is magnified in smaller rivers and streams that can’t flush the same volume as the Mississippi. 

There are other reasons for increased chloride in water, like salt from water softeners and the use of potassium chloride fertilizer, but road salt is typically a dominant source in colder states. 

It’s leading people like Westpfahl – as well as those in state and federal environmental agencies – to realize a change is needed. 

The river is getting saltier 

Unlike other pollutants, chloride doesn’t break down in water over time. In other words, once it’s in, there’s no getting it out. Just a teaspoon of salt can pollute five gallons of water forever. 

So the increase in chloride in the river isn’t from a recent overabundance of road salt being laid down in the winter months. It has built up over decades. And because it doesn’t break down, it’s all headed down into the Gulf of Mexico. 

In a forthcoming report on water quality in the upper river, the Upper Mississippi River Basin Association (UMRBA) found that chloride had increased at least 35% across the basin between 1989 and 2018. All 14 sites on the river where chloride was measured, plus one on the Illinois River, which feeds to the Mississippi, showed increases in the pollutant during that time period, according to UMRBA data. 

At a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources monitoring site in Lynxville, about an hour south of La Crosse, chloride levels in the river had increased by more than 60% since the 1980s, according to a 2021 study from two Mississippi River water quality specialists with the DNR. 

And chloride levels in the portion of the river that runs through the Twin Cities metro area increased 81% between 1985 and 2014, according to a 2016 report from the nonprofit group Friends of the Mississippi River. 

Chloride levels are rising at all 43 DNR river monitoring sites across Wisconsin.

“It really shows that we’re not on a sustainable path,” said Shawn Giblin, who coauthored the 2021 DNR study. “You can’t keep having 1 to 4% annual increases. You’re eventually going to get to chronic toxicity levels.” 

The concept of freshwater becoming saltier, known as freshwater salinization syndrome, isn’t unique to the upper Midwest. In November, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said its scientists have been studying the issue because of “dramatic” salt concentration increases in freshwater around the country and globally. 

Both the EPA and state environmental agencies set limits for when chloride becomes toxic to aquatic life. In Wisconsin, for example, 395 milligrams per liter of chloride in a water body for days at a time is considered chronically impaired, while 757 milligrams per liter, which is instantly toxic to fish, is considered acutely impaired. 

Though the Mississippi River is under the limit, many smaller tributaries are not. In Minnesota, 50 lakes and streams are considered impaired by chloride, and another 75 have chloride levels near the standard, according to the state’s pollution control agency. In Wisconsin, 51 rivers and one lake are chronically impaired by chloride, DNR data show – most in the southeast part of the state. 

Ecosystems hurt by high chloride

High chloride levels can have far-reaching destructive impacts on ecosystems. 

Salt increases the electric current in a body of water and makes the overall environment less habitable, said Lauren Salvato, who coordinates the water quality program for the Upper Mississippi River Basin Association. By adding more and more to the water, the ecosystem starts acting more like an estuary, an area where a freshwater river or stream meets the ocean.

Toxic amounts of chloride can kill freshwater aquatic plants and animals. That includes zooplankton, microscopic animals that feed on algae. Die-offs can then lead to harmful algal blooms, which have their own adverse effects. 

Chloride can also make its way into groundwater, the source of  drinking water for about two-thirds of Wisconsinites and about three-fourths of Minnesotans. Salt’s other component – sodium – can alter the taste of water and could pose health risks for people who are on low-salt diets. 

Finally, elevated chloride levels can also pose an infrastructure problem, corroding lead and copper drinking water lines and leading to contamination.

Searching for solutions

Many municipalities are already experimenting with ways to fix the problem. Brining, where salt is mixed with water before being applied to roads, resulted in a 23% reduction in salt use on average on Wisconsin highways, a 2022 study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison found. Some places even use beet juice to help the solution work at a lower temperature, since standard road salt is much less effective at temperatures lower than 15 degrees. 

That can be combined with other techniques, like pre-wetting salt so it doesn’t bounce off roads and using underbody plows, which can remove hard-packed snow better than plows with a front blade. 

In Minnesota, the state pollution control agency leads a Smart Salting training program to help road salt applicators better understand how too much salt can affect the environment. The training aims to help applicators identify the best balance between ensuring safe traveling conditions and protecting the environment. 

To date, about 5,300 people are currently certified under the program, said Brooke Asleson, the state’s chloride reduction program coordinator. 

The idea emerged in 2005, sparked by concern about Shingle Creek, which joins the Mississippi River in Minneapolis and was the first water body in the state to be designated as chloride-impaired about a decade prior. 

Two years ago, the state made it a requirement for any entity that receives a municipal stormwater permit to get trained on proper salt use and the importance of protecting water quality. Enrollment in the Smart Salting training has significantly increased since then, Asleson said. 

Some participants simply weren’t aware that they could be using less salt, she said. After implementing techniques from the training, many are able to cut their salt use in half. 

One other change that could make a difference: protecting people from slip-and-fall lawsuits as long as they follow proper salting guidelines. 

“Ultimately, the fear (from applicators) is if they don’t put enough road salt down, someone’s going to slip and sue them,” said UMRBA’s Salvato. 

New Hampshire legislators passed a law in 2013 that gave partial immunity from lawsuits to snow-removal companies that participated in a voluntary training program for applying road salt. Similar bills have been floated in Minnesota – where it’s been proposed but not yet passed – and Wisconsin, where one is currently being drafted.  

Communicating why it matters

Advocates for reducing road salt say public awareness is critical. 

The general public is “mostly unaware” of trends in chloride contamination and the harmful effect it can have on the environment, according to a chloride resolution UMRBA adopted in February 2022. The resolution aims to facilitate upper basin states working together to reduce chloride in the river. 

The EPA has also convened a group of cold-weather states to help them share information about easing the impacts of winter road maintenance on the environment. 

“It is a big lift to tackle this chloride issue,” Asleson said. “The more collaboration we can do as states to share information and knowledge with each other, the better off all of us will be at protecting our environment.” 

For Westpfahl, in La Crosse County, it wasn’t hard to convince his staff to get on board with being more mindful of their salt use because many of them share his appreciation for the Mississippi River and nearby lakes. His passion for the issue comes from a longtime friendship with Giblin, the Wisconsin DNR water quality specialist. 

But this winter, which has already been a snowy one, could be a big test. 

To get more salt applicators on board, Westpfahl sees three things that need to happen: Grant money for brining equipment and other materials, protection from lawsuits, and finally, some pressure from the state to heavily encourage people to make the switch. 

Westpfahl said it comes down to “selling people on the right thing versus the easy thing.” 

The Mississippi River, running just blocks away from their downtown campus, serves as a powerful reminder of why he thinks it’s right. 

Road salts wash into Mississippi River, damaging ecosystems and pipes is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Sign up for our newsletter to get our news straight to your inbox.

Mayors along the Mississippi River are asking for more federal help as the drought that has plagued the nation’s water superhighway in recent weeks drags on.

City leaders shared wide-ranging impacts of dry conditions at a Tuesday press conference hosted by the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative, from barge slowdowns to water main breaks caused by shifting dry ground.

With relief from snowmelt across the upper U.S. still months away and future rainfall predictions tenuous, those tasked with keeping barges moving said they’re doing their best but could use more help the next time drought strikes.

The drought is affecting the region even as climate change-induced increases in rainfall amount and intensity have been documented, including during deadly flooding last summer in Eastern Kentucky and St. Louis.

“Low water can have as great a cost, or greater, than high water,” said Jim Strickland, mayor of Memphis, Tenn., where river levels reached a historic low at the end of October. “We have all these tools at our disposal for floods, but very few for droughts.”

The Mississippi River is a major thoroughfare for goods traveling across the U.S. and globally. The basin produces 92% of the nation’s agricultural exports and nearly 80% of the world’s exports in feed grains and soybeans. Nearly two-thirds of all grain exports from the U.S. are shipped on the river.

It’s also the country’s largest drainage basin, and drought conditions are sweeping the U.S. More than half of the Upper Mississippi River Basin and more than 90% of the lower basin are currently in drought, some of which is extreme, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Midwest Climate Hub.

That means less water is flowing into the river, slowing shipping traffic and causing headaches for farmers and others in the basin.

At a port near Greenville, Miss., a barge ran aground Oct. 30, causing a backup of approximately 80 boats and 1,000 barges, Lt. Phillip VanderWeit, a public affairs officer with the U.S. Coast Guard, reported Tuesday.

Barges are also carrying about 40 to 50% less cargo, said Paul Rohde, vice president of the Midwest Area of the Waterways Council, a trade association of carriers and shippers. At its worst backup a few weeks ago, there were 150 boats and 2,200 barges stalled along the river, Rohde said.

Though basin residents may not immediately feel the impacts, as they may have during supply chain slowdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, officials said the delays will be significant.

“We are going to be desperate for road salt for our winters,” Rohde said.

Beyond shipping troubles, the drought is causing other problems in the basin.

Stacy Kinder, mayor of Cape Girardeau in southeast Missouri, said the city experienced a major water main break in October due to dry ground, jeopardizing water quality for residents.

Water lines and pipes in northern states could start to freeze if dry conditions persist after the soil freezes, said Dennis Todey, director of the USDA’s Midwest Climate Hub. For many cities that had to do costly water infrastructure repairs due to flooding in 2019, the drought could again put it at risk – another signal that the two climate extremes are inextricably linked. 

And in New Orleans, where the river empties into the Gulf of Mexico, saltwater is pushing upstream as river levels drop, also threatening municipal drinking water.

The Mississippi River mayors’ group, which is made up of more than 100 municipal leaders across the basin, is pushing for national policy to handle future droughts – which could get longer, more frequent and more severe as the climate changes.

They want federal disaster declarations given to states in drought; policies that allow cities to spend Federal Emergency Management Assistance dollars on drought; compensation for farmers for voluntarily moving land out of irrigation and spending priorities focused on drought mitigation, among other changes.

When the drought will subside is uncertain. Over the next month, much of the basin is forecasted to be warmer than average, meaning evaporation will be a persistent problem, Todey said.

The country is in a La Niña climate pattern, causing drier, warmer weather conditions in the south and colder conditions in the north. The upper Midwest east of the Mississippi could see more snowfall this winter, potentially relieving the Ohio River tributary, according to the Midwest Climate Hub forecasts. But it’s unclear whether precipitation will be higher or lower in the Plains region, meaning a more uncertain path to recovery.

“It’s going to take several rainfalls to be able to start resolving this,” Todey said.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and the Society of Environmental Journalists, funded by the Walton Family Foundation.

Mayors call for federal assistance as Mississippi River reaches record lows is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Sign up for our newsletter to get our news straight to your inbox.

The Pecatonica River runs two blocks from Laurie Thomas’s mother’s stoop in Freeport, Ill. After a recent two-day deluge, floodwaters reached the basement’s ceiling.

But the family’s seen worse.

It was Freeport’s fifth major flood in just the past four years. Thomas and her mother have experienced flooding at least 15 times in the past 20 years. 

As increased rainfall and repetitive flooding strain aging infrastructure in many towns, residents along the Mississippi River ask the same question: Do we pack up and move out? For Thomas and her mother, Freeport, a historical Black community on the east side of town, has always been home – moving is not an option. 

“People have always lived over here and there’s always been the Pecatonica, but lately the floods, they’ve been worse,” Thomas said. “But they’ve been worse everywhere else too. That’s not a reason to kick people out of their homes.”

Staying put in the face of flooding can be dangerous and is growing increasingly costly. Property taxes are the largest source of tax revenue for local governments in most states, but property value declines as flood risk increases. Local governments have doubled their infrastructure spending while federal funding remains relatively flat. The federal government covers about 40% of water and transportation construction, but states are left to maintain it.

Billion-dollar weather events are happening more often. Even after adjusting for inflation, there were twice the number of billion-dollar events during the 2010s compared to the decade prior. 

Without the tax base to maintain infrastructure, sometimes leaving is the only feasible option. But moving away can come with its own pain. 

Relocating a town is “always expensive, complex and contentious,” writes Nicholas Pinter, a professor at the University of California-Davis, in a 2021 paper.

Voluntary buyouts, meanwhile, have cost FEMA billions of dollars that still fall short of the need that will continue to grow as the climate gets wetter. Analyses show the money doesn’t flow out equitably and the buyout process often takes too long. What’s left is not always attractive to the remaining residents. 

“It looks like missing teeth in a poorly maintained mouth,” Pinter described in an interview. “It is not your vision of a thriving town.”  

Choosing to stay or go is difficult — and that’s if communities even get a fair shot at pulling it off. Meanwhile, the flooding doesn’t stop, taking a toll on economies and quality of life. 

It takes a village to save a village 

Charley Preusser, editor of the Crawford County Independent newspaper in Gays Mills, Wis., remembers the sound the water made as it rushed over the ridge one night more than a decade ago. 

It was the first of back-to-back floods of the Kickapoo River that hit the small, southwestern Wisconsin town in 2007 and 2008. Both were considered to be worse than a 500-year flood, which has a one-in-500 chance of occurring in a single year. 

The next day, he made his way carefully from his home in the hills to the newspaper office downtown. He used a canoe to get down Main Street. The first thing he saw when he opened the door was their mini fridge, floating in nearly 3 feet of water like a fishing bobber. 

It took weeks for them to get back into the office, where the water and mud destroyed everything but their paper archives and a clock on the wall. 

After a second flood 10 months later, the village got help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other grants to move some businesses, village services and homes to higher ground. 

Driving into town today, you’ll come upon a general store attached to a gas station, elevated and protected from the river’s backwaters below. Inside, the items for sale include fresh produce, dairy, and meat. It’s unusual to have a grocery in a village of this size — population 523.

“If we hadn’t (relocated), there would not be a store in Gays Mills,” said Larry McCarn, who was village president during the floods. “There would be absolutely nothing.”

Relocating communities away from flood hazards on rivers and coastlines has been happening in the U.S. for more than 100 years. For communities that can achieve it, it’s often bittersweet. But it works to reduce flood damages down the line and help drive economic growth. 

Gays Mills, as is common for relocated communities, has remained connected to its history. The village hosts its annual Apple Festival every fall in the old downtown. In the grocery store, a sign advertises square dancing in the old community center once a month. 

Communities were built along the Kickapoo — the longest tributary of the Wisconsin River — for access to water and convenient travel for trading. Thus, they’re no strangers to coping with floods. 

Soldiers Grove, a small village about 10 minutes from Gays Mills, moved to higher ground in the 1970s. Today, nearby Ontario and Viola are both pursuing new construction in parts of town outside the floodplain. Even before the historic floods that led to relocation in Gays Mills, the village had flooded 20 times since 1900. 

Pinter said communities typically come to a crossroads about relocating after a particularly catastrophic flood, needing to decide whether to rebuild in place yet again or “solve the problem once and for all.” 

Gays Mills’ 2007 and 2008 floods met that definition.

Moving away and staying put both costly endeavors 

The future for flood-prone Freeport looks much different. 

Two years after a historic flood in 2019 in which the Pecatonica River rose over 17 feet, FEMA granted the city nearly $3.4 million so it could buy out over 120 properties in the river floodplain. City officials authorized another $1.1 million in matching funds. 

Thomas said she’s known her neighbors, some of whom are family, her whole life. The amount the city is offering for them to leave isn’t enough, she said, plus many are too old to start over someplace else.

“The lady over there is in a wheelchair. She’s been there all her life. These are older people,” Thomas said, pointing up and down the street. “Where the hell are they going?”

Buy-in won’t make a difference if there’s no money involved. Pinter pointed to the case of Pinhook, Missouri, a majority-Black community that wanted to relocate wholesale to preserve their social bond after massive flooding in 2011. But they weren’t able to find the support to foot the bill. Residents scattered.

Communities that relocate successfully typically take advantage of a disaster and keep the pressure on to obtain resources, Pinter said. 

Gays Mills secured more than $10 million in federal, state and local grant funding, as well as private money, to move. A few years after the floods, it had a new village hall, library and community center, a mercantile building for businesses, and several houses and apartments situated along Highway 131 overlooking the river’s backwaters, safe on higher ground. 

Not everyone agreed with it, and not everyone moved. The village still has empty lots for sale in the newer residential development area. 

When the community got walloped with another record flood in 2018, it was helpful to have fewer businesses and residents in the floodplain, McCarn said, and thus less damage. It also helped to be able to work from the village hall, which was left untouched. 

Back in Freeport, the city buys its first home

In August, nearly a year after Freeport launched its home buyout program, Patricia Norman was the first east-side resident to accept an offer on her home. She remembers a flood a few years back so bad that the fire department had to come evacuate their home. 

“My mom was, at the time, 92,” Norman said. ”We just knew that this was not a good situation for her.”

Norman has fond memories of growing up on the east side, going to Taylor Park School and watching the fireworks from Taylor Park. 

“All the activities that used to take place on the east side, well, none of those take place now,” she said.

Due to severe repetitive flooding, the Freeport School Board voted unanimously to close Taylor Park School – the only elementary school on the town’s east side — in 2020. 

Norman didn’t disclose the purchasing offer the city made for her home, but said she was satisfied with the final number. Many on the east side, Norman said, are conflicted about whether to leave. Either choice has an uncertain outcome, and she’s sympathetic to families like Laurie Thomas’ who don’t want to sell.  

For her part, Norman plans to move to higher ground in Freeport. She adds that the east side will always be part of her and Freeport, after all, is home.

This story is part of When it Rains, a special series from the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and the Society of Environmental Journalists, funded by the Walton Family Foundation. 

To stay or to go: Increased flooding forces choices along the Mississippi River is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Sign up for our newsletter to get our news straight to your inbox.

Summers in Bay City when Frank and Cathy Dosdall were young revolved around Lake Pepin. 

The small Wisconsin village is about an hour southeast of the Twin Cities at the top edge of the 21-mile lake, the largest on the Mississippi River. Decades ago, the lake was full of people swimming, waterskiing and hopping in boats to chase waves from barges that would pass through.

“Any (way) we could get on top of the water when we were kids, we tried it,” Frank recalled.

Today, so much sediment from upstream is flowing in that the community hardly has access to the lake that they once enjoyed. And they’re far from alone in feeling the effects of environmental degradation and other problems along the Mississippi River. 

Flooding is happening with more frequency and lasting longer, changing floodplain habitats. Invasive species are working their way further up the river and into its tributaries. And despite efforts to curb pollution running off land and into the river, the dead zone where the Mississippi empties into the Gulf of Mexico still persists.

Advocates for the river are hoping that a proposed federal funding program, modeled after an effort to clean up the Great Lakes, could change that trajectory. 

The Mississippi River Restoration and Resilience Initiative (MRRRI) was introduced last June by U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, a Democrat from the Twin Cities. It’s based on the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) which launched in 2010. 

Like the Great Lakes initiative, it would operate within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and provide hundreds of millions in federal funding to groups throughout the 10 states along the river. The money could be used to fight invasive species, complete restoration projects, improve water quality and protect against flood damage. The latter, advocates say, is more important than ever, with climate change accelerating and intensifying extreme flood events. 

The Great Lakes initiative is widely recognized as a success story. To date, it has funded over 6,500 projects totaling more than $3 billion, and it got a recent billion-dollar boost from the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Republicans and Democrats alike have voted to increase funding for the initiative nearly every year since it passed. 

The Great Lakes effort passed when support for the EPA was high and bipartisanship was more common. But in a polarized political climate, even champions of the Mississippi River legislation acknowledge it’s been difficult to build momentum in Congress.

Supporters say even if they have to play the long game, it will be worth it to band together the many groups that care about America’s Great River and get more money to address its many challenges.

Mississippi River treated ‘like the nation’s sewer’

Roughly 20 million people live along the Mississippi River, which supplies drinking water to more than 50 cities, drives a recreation-based economy that generates $500 billion each year and is home to more than 780 kinds of fish and wildlife. The river’s basin encompasses 31 states and drains water from 40% of the continental U.S.

Despite its importance, funding for environmental projects is scarce, said Matt Rota, senior policy director at Healthy Gulf, based in New Orleans, La.

“While the Clean Water Act has done a good job of removing some pollutants from the Mississippi River, it’s still treated very much like the nation’s sewer,” Rota said.

Many environmental and health concerns plague the river: harmful algal blooms are forming in areas that are dammed; nitrogen pollution from fertilizer is making people sick; and cities are spending exorbitant amounts to filter their drinking water.

Another big issue is the massive dead zone that forms in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana each year, triggered by nitrogen and phosphorus pollution from agricultural runoff. This year’s dead zone is projected to be the size of Connecticut. 

The lack of funds and mismatched concerns of stakeholders along the river make it difficult to reduce the size of the dead zone, Rota said. 

Agriculture is largely exempt from the Clean Water Act, relying on voluntary measures from farmers to use conservation-based practices that help keep fertilizer in the fields and not in the water, Rota said. 

“One of the things that MRRRI could do is put more money into that system,” he said.

The Great Lakes initiative has already laid a road map for how federal funding could assist farmers in protecting waterways, including things like switching to perennial grasses and planting cover crops.

Great Lakes initiative has helped farmers keep waters clean

Rachel Bouressa was 37 weeks pregnant and holding her toddler’s hand when she first walked into her local Natural Resource Conservation Services office in Waupaca County, Wisconsin.

She was about to take over her family’s farm in New London with one small problem: she had livestock to manage — British White Parks, a heritage breed of beef cattle — but no fence to keep them on her land. The conservation office had funding to help. 

The Great Lakes initiative works with other agency partners to reduce runoff and pollution in the lakes. 

Bouressa’s farm sits in the Wolf River watershed, where a drop of rainfall travels just over 100 miles through the Fox River into the lower bay of Green Bay, picking up fertilizer and pollution along the way. The pollution-filled runoff from the many farms in northeastern Wisconsin is the likely cause of harmful algal blooms every summer that kill off fish and close beaches.

Bouressa’s farm is part of the solution. She practices managed grazing, where livestock can only graze one part of the land at a time, keeping the land continuously covered in grasses. The roots help bind the soil together and let water seep slowly into the ground, reducing soil erosion and runoff into nearby waterways. Practices like this could also greatly reduce the amount of pollution running into the Mississippi River.

The initiative allows federal agencies, states and tribes to direct money toward projects like this.

An action plan that is updated every five years codifies the initiative’s main focus areas, which currently are cleaning up areas of concern, controlling invasive species, restoring habitat and preventing runoff.

Bouressa first received funding from the conservation office in 2016. In 2021, the initiative helped her buy more fencing, pasture seeding and water lines to convert additional land to managed grazing.

The funding “made my farming dreams come true,” she said. “I wouldn’t have had access to get the good fence that I needed without cost-sharing available.”

Mississippi River approach would mirror Great Lakes effort 

With the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative helping people like Bouressa make strides for water quality for over a decade — and similar programs created for Chesapeake Bay and the Everglades — it begs the question why the Mississippi River doesn’t already have its own. 

Among stakeholders, no one has a clear answer. But they suspect it’s because the states that border the river have different interests — and different problems, too. 

“We hear a lot about ‘one river’ and connecting the upper and lower,” said Kirsten Wallace, executive director the Upper Mississippi River Basin Association. “But they’re so different.” Her association does not have a position on the Mississippi River legislation. 

Initiatives that section off the river have been attempted before, said Maisah Khan, policy director at the Mississippi River Network, but until groups from across the basin can join together, the problems they’re working on won’t be solved. The dead zone was recorded at a record size just five years ago, for example. 

“(The states) say, ‘We’re all trying our best on this,’ but letting each state try its best hasn’t really made anything better,” Khan said.

MRRRI project funding — which participating organizations have estimated could be about $300 million — would fall into four main buckets. Those include improving water quality, restoring habitats, reducing the presence of invasive species and creating natural infrastructure to protect against flood damage. 

In the two years after its passage, EPA staff would meet key stakeholders along the river — municipalities, tribal governments, nonprofit organizations and universities — to craft an action plan, identifying which projects should receive funding.

Alongside the action plan would be a science plan, which would create three regional hubs at universities in the 10 border states for research on the river’s challenges. 

The current bill doesn’t outline specific projects that could be funded, and supporters hope that will make clear that communities get to drive it in the direction that works best for them. 

In Bay City, for example, a multimillion-dollar Army Corps of Engineers project will dredge an access channel to connect its harbor to the lake again, as part of a larger habitat restoration effort. Though they secured money for that without MRRRI, funding from the legislation could help the project get replicated on other parts of the lake, said Rylee Hince, executive director of the Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance. 

The financial investment, coupled with local control, could be a gamechanger for small river towns that don’t often see federal dollars come along, Hince said. 

Further down the river, the Tennessee Wildlife Federation is hoping for more dedicated funding to help block invasive carp from coming out of the Mississippi River into the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. They’ve been working for years to secure money for those projects from federal appropriations, said Lindsay Gardner, associate director of policy research, development and federal relations. 

“You have to work that appropriations cycle every year, and it’s uncertain how much money you’ll get,” Gardner said. “Any funds that could help supplement those efforts would be really, really positive, because there’s just not enough money to go around.” 

As a part of MRRRI’s action plan, 35 percent of the funds will be directed towards disadvantaged or low-income communities and communities of color, which disproportionately experience the effects of runoff pollution, low-quality drinking water and severe weather events. 

“When you wall in rivers in one place, the river squeezes out of its banks somewhere else,” said Trevor Russell, water program director for the nonprofit Friends of the Mississippi River. “It generally falls on those who are least able to protect themselves from it.”

According to Khan, with the Mississippi River Network, one key lesson from the Great Lakes initiative is embedding that equity into the process from the beginning.

“The GLRI coalition had some growing pains around that to begin with,” Khan said. “For us, we wanted to make sure that we were thinking about that in the very beginning.”

What happens next? 

To date, more than 100 businesses, organizations and local and state politicians have endorsed the Mississippi River initiative, as well as nine Democratic cosponsors in Congress. No Republicans have signed on. 

Advocates say GOP members have privately expressed support for the idea but want others in their party to sign on first – a sign of the politically difficult climate in D.C. 

The clock is also ticking on a congressional session with loads of other priorities — as well as the midterm elections — to contend with. 

“With the volatile economy and high inflation, MRRRI has not gotten a ton of attention — or maybe gotten the attention we had hoped it would have garnered by now,” said Scott Laeser, water program director for Clean Wisconsin, which has championed the bill. “But I don’t think that says anything about its long-term prospects.”

In an email, McCollum — the primary sponsor — wrote that she is working to win passage during the current session but that there are “many critical issues that need to be addressed in the remaining legislative days.” 

“I’m always hopeful that we can find a place for visionary ideas like MRRRI, and I will keep fighting for this important proposal that will benefit all the communities along the Mississippi River,” she wrote.

Khan said she begins each pitch about MRRRI by underscoring that it’s a voluntary program, not a regulatory one. As such, she said there’s not been much disagreement about the importance something like this could have. 

When the GLRI was re-authorized in 2019, nearly half of the co-sponsors were Republicans.

“People on both sides want to see more investments in the Great Lakes,” Khan said. “And I think that’s what we’re hopeful for in the Mississippi River.” Madeline Heim and Caitlin Looby are Report for America corps reporters who write about environmental challenges in the Mississippi River Basin and the Great Lakes, respectively. Contact them at mheim@gannett.com and clooby@gannett.com. This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Please consider supporting journalism that informs our democracy with a tax-deductible gift to this reporting effort at jsonline.com/RFA.

A federal funding program has helped clean up the Great Lakes. Could it work for the Mississippi River? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Sign up for our newsletter to get our news straight to your inbox.

High water and longer-lasting flooding are changing the habitat along the Upper Mississippi River, according to a new report analyzing nearly 30 years of data.

The upper basin is the natural floodplain that spans from Minnesota through Wisconsin and Iowa to Cairo, Illinois. It’s an ecologically diverse area, consisting of wetlands, marshes and forests. 

The report, released last week, shows increasingly wetter conditions in the Upper Mississippi over the past few decades, a trend that — spurred by climate change and land-use practices — looks likely to continue.  

The report was conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey, Department of the Interior, Army Corps of Engineers and Upper Mississippi River Basin Association. It is the third of its kind produced by the Upper Mississippi River Restoration program, which was created in 1986 to conduct long-term monitoring of the basin and focus on habitat rehabilitation. 

Kirsten Wallace, executive director of the Upper Mississippi River Basin Association, said the findings are a good start to understanding what has impacted the river habitat.

“Clean water management techniques that we’ve put on the landscape have worked,” Wallace said, but “the changing climate and changing hydrology makes the future unknown even though we have these long-term trends.” 

Other organizations study and publish reports on the river, such as America’s Watershed Initiative, which issued a C- grade for the health of the entire basin in its 2020 report card, citing environmental pollution, runoff from farmland and ongoing funding needs for aging locks, dams and ports. 

Wallace said this report can help people understand how the river has changed in different places over time. 

“The river is complex, side to side even, north to south,” Wallace said. “It just changes all the time, so you can’t just say that the river is bad. You can’t just say that the river is good.”

Previous reports were released in 1998 and 2008. But the new analysis — spanning decades and examining more than 800 miles of river — can provide a clearer long-term picture, said Jeff Houser, a USGS research ecologist and science director of the long-term resources monitoring program. 

“By having a long-term data set over a lot of space, we can really begin to understand many aspects of (the river’s) changes,” Houser said. 

Here is a look at some of the report’s key findings. 

More water, longer flooding 

Higher discharge, or put simply, more water running through the river, was the most widespread change observed throughout the Upper Mississippi River system, the report’s authors wrote. 

Climate change — which is causing heavier rainfall, more snow and higher temperatures — as well as land use practices and built constraints like levees all likely play a role, according to the report, though it’s not entirely understood how much each is contributing. 

The upper Midwest is projected to get wetter into the future, particularly during winter and spring, according to the report. And along the river, an increase in surfaces that are impervious — meaning they don’t allow water to seep through and soak into the ground — is forcing more water into the river and its tributaries.

Levees and floodwalls that have been built to prevent flooding have also cut off many wetland areas from the rest of the ecosystem, decreasing ecological diversity. This is more of a problem in the lower portion of the upper basin, in Missouri, Illinois and Iowa, where at least 50% of the river is constrained by levees. 

Floodplain forest cover declining

Most sections of the Upper Mississippi River lost forest cover over the last roughly three decades, largely due to flooding and invasive species, the report found.

Trees along the river are used to some flooding, but when their trunks and roots are submerged for long periods, they suffer and sometimes die, Houser said. 

When the trees die, invasive species move in, such as reed canarygrass and Japanese hops — both of which grow so rapidly they can suppress the growth of new trees. The emerald ash borer is also threatening green ash trees, one of the more abundant species in the floodplain. 

Researchers are exploring ways to protect floodplain forests, but Houser said it may be easier to focus on controlling invasive species than addressing tree loss from excess flooding — which could happen more frequently in the future as the planet warms. 

One stretch of the upper river, between the Missouri and Ohio rivers, bucks this trend. More trees are growing in the floodplain, and Houser said they’re not sure why. 

Water clarity improves, but runoff is high

Typically, the more water drains off the land, the faster it flows. Houser said that usually carries more sediment and nutrient runoff from farm fields, which can kill plants in the river and ultimately contribute to the Dead Zone, the low-oxygen area at the mouth of the river in the Gulf of Mexico. 

But in the upper stretches of the system, the picture is more complicated: aquatic plants are thriving and water clarity has improved despite higher discharge. There was a small but significant decrease in total suspended solids, particles — like sand and dirt — in the water, and a decrease in total phosphorus, which tends to stick to those particles. 

There are many state and federal programs working to reduce farm runoff throughout the upper Midwest, and the findings may illustrate that some of those efforts are working, Houser said. Aquatic plants, which have rebounded following a widespread loss in the 1980s, can also slow down water velocity and help sediment settle. In turn, clearer water allows sunlight to reach plants and promotes growth.

“It seems that the vegetation itself is helping to further clarify the water,” he said. 

Farther down the river, aquatic vegetation is more scarce. And even with the observed decreases, runoff concentration still exceeds U.S. Environmental Protection Agency benchmarks, according to the report. 

Invasive carp taking over 

Silver carp and bighead carp, which were first identified in the Upper Mississippi River in the 1990s, now represent up to 65% of the fish in three of the southernmost study areas. 

They’re more efficient feeders than most native fish and also eat plankton, which all young fish eat and some fish eat their entire lives. Thus they can clear much of the food out of the water directly in competition with other fish.

Invasive carp are “prolific reproducers” that can breed many generations of fish in a year, Houser said. 

Popular sport fish species have declined in the lower portions of the system, as well as forage fish, which represent the middle of the food chain.

It’s unclear whether invasive carp will be able to take hold in the upper stretches of the river, where they’ve been found but have not yet begun to dominate, Houser said. Some environmental advocacy groups have pushed for a sound barrier to be installed in the water farther upriver to discourage carp from getting through. 

High water, prolonged flooding changing ecosystem of the Upper Mississippi, new report finds is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.