Managing River Basins for Society

Jonathan Higgins ’80 is a freshwater conservationist who studies river basin ecosystems. He’s director of conservation for The Nature Conservancy’s Great Rivers Program.

Without an accurate understanding of how a river basin such as the Mississippi has been managed historically, one might be tempted toward cynicism. But as Jonathan Higgins explains, society thought it was doing the right thing with the knowledge it had.

“After the 1927 flood of the Mississippi, our big thing was to build levees to protect people,” Higgins says. “The Army Corps of Engineers was given the authority to build levees and levee districts all throughout the Midwest. They gave people a sense of security. It’s a false sense, because a lot of those levees are 80 years old and in need of help. It costs millions of dollars to rebuild one levee. But you can’t look in the rear view mirror and say ‘let’s go back to where it was.’”

The rational approach, Higgins says, is to look at where society has come, where people are living now, how they make their livings, and try to manage the environment in ways that move society forward.

“I’m not trying to turn the Midwest back into a huge wet grassland prairie and swamp,” Higgins says. “You know, in Iowa and Illinois you used to get malaria 150 years ago because it was wet, and there were lots of mosquitos. We don’t want to go back to that. But we want to be able to sustain species and natural communities —and the processes that maintain them — in ways that also benefit society.”

Such approaches include reconnecting floodplains that have been disconnected from the river to provide habitat for fish reproduction, waterfowl, recreation, and to lower flood risk.

With nearly 200 million more people living in the country than when the levee system was built, Higgins says, “People are living in places where they shouldn’t. And because they’re living there, that part of the ecosystem can’t function. Every state has people that manage floodplains and water infrastructure, and those folks know now, as new development comes, they should manage to maintain those floodplains for at least the capacity they have now.

“The greater challenge is to restore and reconnect floodplains since many are currently in agriculture use or are developed,” Higgins says. “Reconnecting them will allow rivers to move where they naturally move, lower flood risk, and be more productive. The Nature Conservancy and others are working in many areas around the country to evaluate alternative management and mixed uses for floodplains, including maintaining agricultural production while allowing intermittent flooding every few years.“

For all dams and levees, the Army Corps must fulfill designated uses whether for flood risk management, reservoir operations, water sources, or recreation. “We’re working with them in a lot of places in the United States because, even given these designated uses, there is a lot of wiggle room to manage these dams so that rivers get the kind of flows they naturally would get during the year,” Higgins says.

As a result, wetland and riparian areas downstream have been regenerated, the reservoir economy has benefitted, and fishing has been maintained or improved.

“It’s kind of like the Wild West in conservation,” Higgins says. “There is no text book or manual to work from, and approaches and partnerships that are working now seemed like impossibilities in the past. The Corps has flexibility and authority in operating management plans, but nobody has ever told them to manage dams for the environment. So, it’s not their fault. They’re being told to manage dams for a certain set of needs to society.

“We just took the opportunity to try to figure out how to do it better, and now the Army Corps is a big partner with us to try to manage existing dams to recreate components of natural flow regimes. It’s really remarkable that nobody really thought about it before.”