As the American Queen approached a lock, a crowd gathered on deck to watch the proceedings. I walked around and listened to what folks were saying, and I heard a lot of admiration and wonder at the engineering. This happened at nearly every lock the boat passed through between St. Louis and St. Paul. I understand their reaction. I’m fascinated, too, by the work it took to build those structures. Not once, though, did anyone ask what it cost to build, operate, and maintain those locks, nor did anyone ask about the effect on the river of those engineering feats.
A few weeks later I stopped at Lock and Dam 9 near Lynxville, Wisconsin. At the lock, a crowd of about a dozen people watched a tow and barges pass through. The Corps has a display on site showing the efficiency of barges compared to other forms of transportation, or at least their view of it, but they don’t have any signs that explain how much it costs (a lot), who pays for it (taxpayers, mostly), or what those dams have done to the river (it’s not better off).
I was thinking about these issues in light of a couple of political developments this fall—the weakening of a key environmental regulation that is attached to a bill that might actually pass Congress and the Mississippi River mayors’ group call for increased funding for the Corps for navigation projects on the river. When it comes to the Mississippi River, there is a political consensus that the river belongs to barges and that taxpayers should foot the bill for remaking the Mississippi into a glorified shipping canal.
Courtesy Cleveland.com (Plain Dealer file)
This is all very disheartening—and maddening—but it gets worse. Recent public opinion polls from Gallup and the RT network show a decline in support for a number of environmental causes and for environmental activism specifically. The public is more receptive to environmental causes when rivers are catching on fire and bald eagles are dying.
The economic downturn of the last few years has probably weakened support for environmental causes in recent years, especially in cases where people perceive that environmental protection might cost jobs. Forcing industries to pay their fair share of the infrastructure costs might reduce shipping on the Mississippi River, which, while good for the river’s ecosystem, might put some people out of work. That’s a tough sell in a down economy, even if those jobs are heavily subsidized by taxpayers.
A big part of the problem is an old-fashioned public relations issue. Unfortunately, we are way behind. The shipping industry and the Corps generally speak with a single voice and follow the same script, even if they bicker from time to time. Reporters know who to contact when they need a quote about a navigation issue, and write sympathetic stories about river shipping when it is disrupted, like during the past couple of years where river levels fluctuated dramatically. They have a very effective megaphone, and they aren’t afraid to use it.
But who speaks for everyone else? Now more than ever we need our own megaphone and a consistent message to broadcast. We need to come together with a loud and consistent voice to counter the PR machine of the river shipping interests. Our voice must become just as associated with the Mississippi River as the Corps itself.
We also need our own script, one or two powerful talking points, something like: Your tax dollars are fattening the wallets of big corporations, and they’re using your money to damage the river. That might be too harsh, but you get my point. We need a strong narrative to compete in the public relations arena. We need good stories that speak to these talking points, that illustrate the multitudes of people who are connected to the river, and show the costs and damage done by the single-minded pursuit of making the river friendlier to big boats. And we need to go on a public relations blitz along the river to call attention to our talking points and to establish our voice as one that needs to be quoted along with the voice of shipping interests.
I hope the Mississippi River Network or the 1 Mississippi Campaign can be that voice. It has to be more effective than a few dozen little voices trying to be heard. The thing is, we don’t have a lot of time to spend on planning and process issues. Decisions that are coming up in the near future could impact the river for a generation or more. We need to find our voice now, put our lips to a megaphone, and start raising hell; politely, of course.
Guest Blog contributed by MRN member Dean Klinkenberg, a St. Louis-based author who writes about the history and culture of the Mississippi Valley. The thoughts and opinions in this blog are those of Mr. Klinkenberg and do not represent all MRN members. You can follow his work at www.MississippiValleyTraveler.com.