Pros and cons about improvements to locks and dams Some in
Congress; much of the general public outside the Mississippi
River basin, and even some university ecologists and other
professors aren’t convinced it is a wise idea to invest heavily
in upgrading the locks and dams system of the Mississippi River.
Earlier this month, Robert Criss, a professor of earth and
planetary sciences at Washington University, St. Louis, wrote a
commentary for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper in which he
argued against an “infusion of federal funds for river
engineering and maintenance projects” for the Mississippi River
and Missouri River. To condense and paraphrase, Criss had six
points of complaints: - River structures impede flow and destroy
wetlands or isolate the channel from floodplains. - Loss of
shallow water and island habitat decrease fish, fowl and mussel
type animal reproduction and volume. - River structures provide
opportunities for invasive river species to spread such as Asian
carp. - Barge traffic is not