Corps Reform Network Protects 75,000 Acers of Rare Backwater Habitat in SE Illinois, in the New Madrid Floodway

In September 2009, Corps Reform Network Coordinator George Sorvalis and National Wildlife Federation Sr. Water Resource Specialist David Conrad spent a week in SE Illinois, meeting with the Mayors of towns which were being threatened by more flooding from a Corps of Engineers project called the St. Johns/New Madrid Floodway project. Working with the Mayors, and local Corps Reform Network partners, including Barb McKasson of the Shawnee Group of the Sierra Club, and Senator Durbin, we were able to defeat this project...again, to help protect the towns from flooding, and save 75,000 acres of rare backwater habitat, that would also have been dried up and destroyed by the project.

In 2004, National Wildlife Federation and Environmental Defense sued the Corps to stop this project, which the Corps had already started to construct. In Sept. 2007, the Judge halted the project and ordered the the Corps to de-construct what it had already build, and to restore the project site to its natural conditions. However, Senator Bond had written language into a federal spending bill which would have take away all of the corps's restoration money, effectively halting the restoration of the site, and leaving open the possibility of the project moving forward again.

We defeated the project again by getting Senator Durbin to remove Senator Bond's provisions from the bill, to keep the restoration going. On October 28th, President Obama signed the bill into law, with the restoration money in tact.