SUPPORTING TRANSBOUNDARY WATERSHED ACTIVITIES: THE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONAL JOINT COMMISSION
GERALD E. GALLOWAY, JR. P.E., PHD, BG USA (RETIRED)

 

 

 

 

I am here under false pretenses. John asked me to talk about watershed boards and the International Joint Commission (IJC). When he called me I was working for the IJC. I have since moved on to another firm. So, I want to talk to you today about that, but I also want to talk to you about floods, a little bit about technology, and most of all about you. You are part of the whole thing. I do want to dispel something that John said. I am not the third person in this Lewis and Clark group and I am not here because I was here when they marched past here in 1804. Although some people would give you that impression.

Let me talk at the beginning about the so-called "Great Flood" of 1993. I have never figured out why floods are "great." I want to remind you of those headlines and as you can see, "Floods Cripple Des Moines", "Disaster", all of those sorts of words. The flood of 1993 was very impressive. A few pictures may tell you a little bit more about it. Can you imagine a million cubic feet per second going by St. Louis? That's enough to fill Busch Stadium behind the Arch once every 60 seconds. That's a lot of water. When you look at the people who were affected, Jefferson City across from the state capitol, the entire area was under water. We know what happened here in Iowa. Individual homes under water, the challenge of facing not just two days or three days as you see on some flash floods, but months with your land under water, not being able to cultivate it, not being able to get back in your house, and seeing your highways filled--the east to the west of the United States cut in half. Railroads no longer able to go. What a challenge. What impressed me the most in dealing with the 1993 flood, and we are looking at the 10th anniversary of that flood, was the spirit of the people--the people who were on the land, in the cities who bounced back. This is the one I remember the most--that is the solution. I am still looking for the person that is going to make that very large sponge and we will just go around and sop it all up. If you really have courage, you are completely surrounded by water and you just say "NO FEAR." That is what it is because you recognize that in times of stress, your friends and your neighbors and your government are going to be there to help you. People from the state and local governments and the federal government, and non-governmental organizations are going to be there as they were in 1993.
What about it? The problem is major floods are continuing to occur. That is the quad-cities in 2001. They will continue to occur. If you can't read that cartoon--they are going down the river and it says "When was our last 100-year flood?" The answer was "Yesterday." That is what is happening. We thought we knew and understood what a 100-year flood was-a flood of this height is going to occur on the average of one percent chance every year which would come out to be 100 years. It turns out we have had a lot of them and maybe 100 years wasn't the right answer. Maybe it was a 50-year or 75-year flood. We don't know for sure a lot about why these major meteorological events occur. Flood damages are continuing to grow. We have been at the business of flood control since the 1936 Flood Control Act, which said it is the business of the federal government to reduce damages. For sixty years we have been building levees and flood walls. In fact, they have done a great deal of good as I will point out in a second. In reality, we continue to see damages grow because people are putting themselves in harms way. The last decade, even when you average out and bring everything to the same cost level, has been one of the toughest decades we have had and we are worried about the future. The answer is that we have to do something.

I'd like to talk to you for a couple of seconds about what it is we have to do. It is very clear that we still have people and property at risk in the floodplain. The challenge is most of the people who are at risk really don't appreciate that. Most of you do. You live on the land. You understand what is going on. But a lot of people and especially people who have moved into huge housing developments where they can see the river from here, don't recognize they may see it a lot closer. We have a lot of places where people are unnecessarily developing. It is not going to get any better. That is the bad news. When, in fact, we have this pressure for growth, we have people and we have to find a place for them to live. The challenge then becomes where do we put them? I would argue that one of the things we have to do is put them in the right places and that we in this room have to help influence those decisions. The second thing is we recognize there is either climate change or climate variability, especially in this part of the country. Going north from here, we have seen in the last 25 years a complete shift in the weather patterns. We recognize that every prediction of climate change said we may have less water, but when it comes, it going to be violent and we are going to have floods. We have to take that into account. The last part is uncertainty. We have a lot of infrastructure and by that I mean the levees and floodwalls and dams and many of them are getting old. It has been estimated by the American Society of Civil Engineers that $1.6 trillion exists in a backlog of infrastructure construction. We have to go out and take care of these or we are going to end up with some disasters. Before we move on, let me say that the structures that have gone in, small dams, large dams, and levees, have provided protection to millions. Occasionally, when I start to talk about the 1993 flood, everybody says "Oh, it was the levees and the dams that did it." That is not the case. They saved literally billions of dollars in the 1993 flood and as you know, wise use of these structures can in fact reduce damages and protect people. We don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water. At the same time, we need to recognize that a lot of the things we have done have a caused a tremendous loss to our natural environment. We have to something about that.

So, what are we trying to do? In our Nation's floodplain development, use of the floodplains, use of watersheds, it is to reduce flood damages from the flood standpoint only, but at the same time we have to protect and enhance the environment. We have to also take into account that our Nation needs to grow. So, we somehow have to balance all of these. Let me share with you the answer. The answer is there are no silver bullets unless somebody can find Charleton Heston to help hold off floods. Everybody would like a single answer, but I am here to tell you that there is no easy answer to dealing with floods. What needs to be done--when we reported to the President in 1994, we said these are the four things that need to be done:
· Share responsibility. Flood damage reduction, flood control is not just the responsibility of Washington. Would you want Washington to tell you how to run your community? No. It is something that has to be done at the federal, state, local level, and with individuals. Everybody has to have a role in this and has to play a part. We are gradually seeing that take place. We have to avoid the use of the floodplain when you don't need to be there. Don't build housing developments. They are trying to build a 5,000 unit housing development in the floodplain in Columbia, South Carolina R&D Center. There are lots of upland areas. Why go there when you can have other areas? It is flat and easy to develop, but there is a reason for that. That is because the river sort of cleared off.
· Minimize damages to the development that is there. Obviously, the first thing you are going to look at is catching the water where it falls on the land. You all know that better than anybody else. If, in fact, you can have the land be a source, a place for the water to land and to soak in, where it can be captured in small dams, where it can be put to use, and then let out to go downstream that makes a difference. You can do this naturally and you can do it through structures. The second part of that is to go to flood-proofing. Move people up, raise them up. I tell you in some places in southern Illinois, those of you from down around Cairo, certainly appreciate the fact that you might be 16 feet up in the air if you did that, but there are other places where it makes sense to raise somebody two or three feet. There are a lot of things you can do to protect people. Relocate. Since the 1993 flood, 27,000 families have been relocated out of the floodplain by the federal and state governments on a voluntary basis. Nobody has been pushed out the door. Hundreds of thousands of acres have been acquired as easements or in fee in order to take land that was marginal and put it to a use that would support enhancement of the environment and still leave the opportunity for hunting and fishing and protection of the land.
· If you can't protect people any other way, go to levees and floodwalls. Recognize that they must environmentally, socially, and economically justifiable.
· The last thing is mitigate the damages. Educate people. Make sure people have insurance. We are still running ten to fifteen to twenty to thirty percent depending on where you are in terms of people who live in the floodplain, are at risk, and who buy insurance. It is a known fact that if you live in a house and you have a 30-year mortgage, you have a one in four chance of having your house flooded. Nobody I know would not buy fire insurance, but most people, more than two-thirds of the people that live in the floodplain don't seem to see the need for the flood insurance. That is a challenge for everybody. Lastly, go to some sort of early warning system where you have it.

Have things changed? Have we made progress? You bet. We have made a lot of progress and you have been a part of it. I appreciate that. John Peterson keeps telling me of all the wonderful things that are going on in the Coalition. The sorts of work you are doing. First of all, we have a lot more awareness of the fact that people are at risk. We have a National Flood Insurance Program with signs all over. You really can't pick up a paper or can't turn on the television and not see some sort of commercial saying, "Do you want to lose your precious photo albums, everything you have in your house? Know more about floods. Do you want to see everything you have worked so hard for disappear. Get insurance". Those things are becoming more common. Communities are learning. Flood maps are more frequently seen by the general public. I think because of the television age in which we live (the 1993 flood was the CNN flood) people recognize the trauma that was faced by people who were under water for three, four, and five months. Since then the media has been very good when there is a flood showing you not just the water on the land, but showing the impact on people. That is a positive step.

There has been a lot of attention at the state and local level. We have had a lot of revisions to rules to prevent people from going in and developing where they shouldn't be able to develop. People have had the guts to stand up. I have met many mayors and community leaders who say, it is sometimes tough to go into a meeting and tell you neighbor you ought not to be expanding there. You ought not to develop there. You ought not to put something in the floodway that is going to get washed downstream when the big flood comes along and get jamed in the bridge down there and cause problems for others. It takes courage. You are seeing a lot more of that sort of courage.
As I mentioned before, we have relocations and land acquisitions taking place. What you see here is what many you remember is the town of Balmier, Illinois. The entire community was relocated from the floodplain up onto the bluff behind it. That is an exception. I would be the first to tell you that. But, it does say that when a community gets together, they can make good decisions about moving those parts that are at risk out of the floodplain.
We have a lot of attention to natural resources. As I go through the room next door and look at the exhibits, everywhere you see the same thing. Blend quality and quantity. Look at the impact on the natural environment. What can we do to restore our hunting and fishing resources? What can we do to make sure the ecosystem we have today will be there for our grandchildren? The programs in the farm bill and the other programs make a difference.
We are beginning to think on a comprehensive basis. You all have been doing it for a long while. But, in a lot of places in the country, people want to take care of me first and not worry about the others. If I can get a levee in my community, I don't care what it does to somebody downstream or upstream. Well, you all have recognized that you have to operate on a watershed basis. I think now with major flood control issues, we are beginning to recognize that you have to develop these comprehensive plans. It doesn't mean you can't build a levee or a floodwall or do what you need to do to protect your community, but you have to make sure you are not harming somebody above or below you with these activities.

The availability of technology--I will come back and talk about that. Just think ten years ago, we really did not have the Internet. That may be good or bad as you look at it, but the Internet and computers and stand-alones, and Palm Tops and cell phones, none of that was there. That has done a lot for us, but more can be done.
The bottom line is we are moving in the right direction; this balance between having always to protect and getting people to do the right thing is headed in that direction. We are making progress in reducing flood damages if we keep on this track. Just realize they are rising everyday. There is the answer, but there are some other things I need to talk to you about. I am going to put those off because they blend into the second part.

I want to talk to you now about the International Joint Commission, U.S. and Canada and what John asked me to come here and talk about, but it does blend with what we are talking about, transboundary watersheds. What is the International Joint Commission? I am sure all of you know. The International Joint Commission is an international body created by the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909. It operates along the border we share with Canada, 5,300 miles and has operations that extend from the Gulf of Maine to the Yukon. It is a unique organization--six commissioners, three appointed by the President of the United States with the advice and consent of the Senate, three appointed by the Prime Minister in Council in Canada of an equal stature. The U.S. commissioners are Idena Shornack (?) from Michigan, Irene Brooks from the state of Washington, and Al Olson is a former governor of North Dakota now living in Minnesota. So, we have on the U.S. side a fairly broad geographic range. On the Canadian side, The Right Honorable Herb Gray who is the chairman on the Canadian side spent the last eight years as the Deputy Prime Minister, the Vice President of Canada. Jack Blaney (?) is from British Columbia, and Robert Gourd )?) is from Quebec. So you have some very strong players who represent their countries in doing what? This is an organization that the federal governments sends out without instructions. I was at a meeting at the State Department a year ago and the chairman got up and made that statement. We operate without instructions. The Assistant Secretary of State was there and almost fell off the platform, because he didn't realize that. But, going back to 1909 when this treaty was developed, it said we want you to appoint three people on either side and send them off to decide what is best for the two countries on issues we tell them to worry about.

What are those issues? Well, first of all, they operate with a balance in everything they do. Imagine, Canada is large in size, but small in population and yet they have equal representation in everything we do. In our boards and working groups (I will tell you what the boards do in a second), when somebody goes to work for the IJC they work in their personal and professional capacity that means I could be working today for the Bureau of Reclamation or the Corps of Engineers, but when I go to work on the Raney Board for the IJC, I talk off that federal hat and do what is best for the people who live in that region in the two countries together. They focus on good science and full public involvement.

What the IJC does is regulate. Any time you want to build something in the boundary water, you have to get approval from the IJC and there are 19 such structures on the boundary including the outlets from Lake Superior at Sioux St. Marie, the Moses-Saunder Dam at the St. Lawrence River which regulates the height of Lake Ontario, and those on the Raney River. You can go across the country in both directions and find others. They regulate those. They don't operate them. They have boards of control, and that is an important concept, that are made up of both Corps of Engineers or Bureau of Reclamation and their counterparts from Canada, to tell the operators of these dams or structures how to operate them.

Over the years at the request of the governments, they have addressed over 50 potential issues ranging from air pollution to groundwater pollution to actually raising water on one side to the detriment of the other. They do alerting reports on everything from water to air. We actually apportion water in the _________, St. Mary, and Milk Rivers. Lastly, as you can see, they are the monitors of the Great Lakes Water Quality Act.

In 1997, the two governments came to the IJC and said okay you have been at this business for close to 90 years, tell us what you are going to do in the 21st century. What the Commission said was we are going to meet this transboundary challenge we have. One of the things we are going to do is address the issues that we see on the horizon. All of these sorts of things that are occurring wherever you live are occurring in the boundary areas. The impacts are the same, but they are impacts that extend across an international boundary which offers all sorts of interesting challenges. They said the solution to this from our standpoint is to establish Transboundary Watershed Boards. We have watershed groups on both sides of the boundary, but the challenge is how do you get people together who are across an artificial line, the longest undefended, unfenced border in the world, between the U.S. and Canada, and there are political barriers to making easy movement back and forth. What the IJC proposed, what they told the governments in 1997, is in each of the transboundary watersheds areas we form an International Watershed Board. We are not sure what it would look like, but what we want to do is get a group of people together so they can deal collectively with what one side has done on its own and the other side has done on its own, and deal with it as a whole. Go out and try that. Well that is what the IJC has been about since 1999. They are proposing watershed boards and again it is up in the air as to exactly who is on these boards, but the membership might include some federal and state representatives, local governments, individual private citizens representing groups or regions. Then the people who are on the control boards, the co-chairs, the people who actually tell the operators when to let water out of particular dams that might influence an area that is affected by IJC activity.

What are the underlying themes? The first is you have to look at this cross-boundary area with one ecosystem's approach. An ecosystem is something that includes the human part of the entire system. It is what the ecological system, the natural system, and the human system coming together means. How do you put these together and develop the watershed, ensure that the issues are brought to the fore in this environment that spans two countries and across a boundary that may or may not have been one of friendliness over the years. So, how are we going to discuss these issues? It is to do it in ecologically consistent ecosystems approach. The second thing is to provide a place for people to come together to discuss things. You will never hear the IJC say that the International Watershed Boards are there to manage the watersheds. Management is the function of the people who live there, of the state and local level individuals there. It is not a federal or an international responsibility.

What is it going to do if you have an International Watershed Board in your region? It is going to provide a place where you can get all the agencies at the table at one time, where you can get a report that goes to the national capitals that says, in this particular transboundary watershed, we have these problems. What is the reason for that? Maybe, as you look across this entire boundary, the 5,000 mile boundary, you can find commonalities, problems that need to be addressed on one side as well as the other that are common in these particular watersheds. Perhaps, the federal governments could do something about it or a combination of states or regions can do something about it. It is to surface issues, advise the governments. Again, not tell them what to do. As you look down the rest of that list, you can see nothing that says you are going to manage, that the watershed board would tell you what to do. It is to come together to talk about what is best for that watershed. The responsibilities are to monitor, keep an eye on what is going on, alert, study when necessary, and advise governments as to what to do.

Where are they? As I told you before, there are transboundary watersheds across the entire boundary. Right now the IJC is focused on three areas., the Red River Basin of the North that runs from Fargo north into Winnipeg, the Raney-Namekin Area, and the St Croix Basin in Maine and New Brunswick. Why these three? Well, they went out in surveyed all of the watersheds along the boundary, talked to the governors and the local people and found that people were most receptive in these three areas. I will tell you, to be very honest, there is a lot of suspicion. People were looking for the black helicopters because this is an international organization coming in to visit and they always started with, "Well we're here to help you, we have good ideas." Well, you all have been there before. In the Red River Basin, reeling from the 1997 flood and the need to develop a comprehensive watershed plan for that entire basin because when the next big flood comes you are going to have to deal with water that flows from Fargo and Grand Forks to Winnipeg which was that much from being under water in 1997, people are beginning to see the need to work together in a consolidated team. Right now, there is the Red River Basin Commission which is a large watershed group and lots of other sub-watershed groups working as a team. The question is how the IJC works with the basin commission and the watershed groups to come up with something that will help facilitate these transboundary issues. That is one. The second is the St. Croix River, which is the separation between New Brunswick and Maine. There the issues are as simple as dealing with Alwives competing with Salmon to go upstream and should they or not? In this particular case, the current issue is the state of Maine is trying to keep Alwives out and Canada is trucking them around the barriers the state of Maine has put in and dumping them above, little things like that. The Passamaquoddy Tribe in the upper part of the basin doesn't like what the Passamaquoddy Tribe in the lower part of the basin is doing. How do we get everybody at the table. The IJC has found some interest there. In the Raney-Namekin, it has not been quite that easy. I would tell you about it because there the issue is people are concerned with too much involvement from people outside of their particular region. The effort is to indicate to people wherever there is consideration of a Transboundary Watershed Board that it has to start with the people on the ground. We have to have local representatives who want to be part of this solution. There they have been troubled by flooding in 2001 and 2002. They have other problems with the fisheries resources in Namekin and Raney and downstream problems on Raney and Lake of the Wood, all of which have international implications. The IJC is simply offering the opportunity to provide a vehicle together across that boundary and to work together.

What are the challenges. I will conclude with just a few challenges. The challenge is in both dealing with the flood challenge that you face (what are we going to do about flood damage reduction in this country) and the challenge with dealing with watersheds whether they be transboundary or otherwise is the need to work togther. I continue to find and continue to hear people at meetings like this say the public doesn't understand and appreciate what we are doing. They don't understand what a watershed is. They don't understand what a floodplain is. What we really have to do is increase that public understanding and interest. The second part is we have to get everybody at the table with us, the NGO community. Many of you are doing that now. But in the past it has been very clear you'd say here is somebody from the Sierra Club let's not let them in the door, or here is somebody from this group we don't want them there. We are never going to get to a solution, and I have seen that working on the Missouri River issues. I have seen it working on the Red River of the North and many other place that there are challenges in dealing with people whose ideas may not be the same as yours, but there are also tremendous benefits. There is a need for more collaboration among federal agencies and state agencies. Here, after the flood of 1993, I never saw anything better than all agencies coming together to solve the problems in Nebraska and Iowa, and Illinois and Missouri in trying to get over the flood. That doesn't always happen that way. That picture is an interesting one. It is one taken in the New Orleans District of the Corps of Engineers and it is a group of people that share an office and they are from all the agencies illustrated by those symbols, Fish & Wildlife Service, NOAA, USGS, and the Corps of Engineers. They work together. I am sure you have done studies and seen studies over your lifetime where somebody gives you the study when it is finished and says, "Give me your comments." That is called coordination. What we are talking about is the need for collaboration. That means that the day somebody says, "I am going to start a study," they say, "Come sit at my table with me and lets work this one together." I would argue that we collectively need to do more collaboration.
We need to capitalize on technology. I mentioned that we have come a long way, but look what is out there. We can now get digital elevation data through airborne platforms that will tell us within six inches or a foot of the contour intervals in large areas, create flood maps. We can have decision support systems. We can do disaster networks to tell people when to move out of the floodplain. We can know what is happening upstream. We can keep, in real time, information and pass it on to other people. We have to work together on these challenges and everybody has to get on the same set of standards. In 1994 when we looked at the Mississippi flood, we discovered when we went around asking for the information you have on your land, there was every different format that there is. Consortiums of people who run geographic information systems and the Federal Geographic data Standards Committee all put out rules. It is amazing, people are beginning to abide by them, but we all have to get behind that sort of an effort and link them to other systems.

What do we need? We need leaders. I want to compliment you for being here in Council Bluffs and being here in this room instead of being next door making your living at the machines, because you have indicated a desire to be leaders in the community. Not because you are here at lunch, but you are here at this meeting because you want to be leaders in the watershed business. That is what we need. We need people who are willing to go out as you are, and work for the vision. I would claim that when you can see yourself in that vision whether it is in the international watershed or your own watershed work, it is going to make a difference. I would leave you with a couple of thoughts. I would ask you to continue to be involved the way you have been. Technically, making sure that new ideas keep moving along and that as we get success we share that success with other people. Educationally, our success is going to lie in what we teach in our schools. If the children of tomorrow and the children of today don't see in their curicula the understanding of watersheds, the understanding of how precious water is as our chairman today indicated, how little of that apple is really available for us, we are going to have some real problems. The last thing is something that I find frequently is looked on as I don't want to do that. You have to become politically and institutionally involved. Many of you are. Many of us and I am an engineer by trade and engineers say I don't get involved with politics. That is somebody else's business. We all need to influence decision makers. We need them to understand what you know. So many of them do not appreciate the challenges you face on the land. Many of them don't appreciate the challenge of living with the floods. I think it is up to us all to get out and influence them to take the actions that are necessary. I am really hyped. I think there are a lot of things going on. I think we are making great progress and I am willing to say that you make the difference. Having this Coalition makes a difference. When you leave here and go back to your communities, you make the difference between what will be success in the rest of this century and not. I want to thank you for what you are doing. I want to thank you for your time and again wish you well in the rest of this conference. You make a difference in how we are going to see tomorrow. Thank you for doing that.