Missouri tries to crack down on water exports to drought-weary West

Few current uses, but state considering law similar to others nearby as specter of scarcity looms

Missouri lawmakers say water has almost always been plentiful in their state, giving no reason to think twice about a concept known as riparian rights — the idea that, if you own the land, you have broad freedoms to use its water.

But that could change under a bill advancing quickly in a state legislature that is normally sharply divided. The measure would largely forbid the export of water across state lines without a permit, even though there is no evidence that is happening on any large scale.

Just the specter of water scarcity is inspiring bipartisan support. Besides persistent drought in parts of the state and plummeting Mississippi River levels in recent months and years, lawmakers are wary of the West, and the chance thirsty communities facing dwindling water supplies will look east for lakes and rivers to tap.

“They’re not being real responsible,” Republican state Rep. Jamie Burger, one of the bill’s lead sponsors, said of states like California and Arizona. “We feel like we need to be responsible in Missouri and protect what we have.”

If passed, the new limits would be the latest domino to fall as climate change makes droughts more frequent and intense across huge swaths of the United States, and threatens to exhaust water supplies in some parts of the West within the foreseeable future. States including Oklahoma, Iowa and Nebraska already have similar safeguards on water exports in place, while a compact among Great Lakes states has largely banned exports beyond the limits of their watershed since 2008.

Meanwhile, California has struggled to capture vast amounts of rain water, Arizona faces booming growth and depleting aquifers, and states across the Colorado River basin are at odds over solutions to keep that vital waterway flowing.

Besides the bipartisan support in Missouri’s capital, the measure also brought together the farming industry and environmentalists who are all concerned about how much more scarce water could become in the future.

“The state of Missouri should not be shipping water to farm alfalfa in Arizona or almonds in California,” said Michael Berg, political director for the Sierra Club’s Missouri chapter. The Missouri Farm Bureau and state corn growers’ association also testified in favor of the legislation.

The bill’s proponents acknowledge no one is suggesting that, at least not yet. They point to perennial talks of diverting the Mississippi River west, and of proposals to export large amounts of water from Iowa and North Dakota.

But they fear it’s only a matter of time before someone looks to tap Missouri’s groundwater and mighty rivers, the Missouri and the Mississippi. Drought currently stretches across about a third of Missouri and is even more widespread and extreme in states upriver on the Mississippi.

“Each year, dozens of proposals, ranging from serious to laughable, are made to export large volumes of water from water-rich states to water-poor ones,” Charles Miller, then of the Missouri Confluence Waterkeeper, testified last year at a hearing on a similar bill in the Missouri legislature that did not advance. “Most of these are costly and ill-considered, but without statutory authority to conserve our state’s water resources, Missouri would have no way to stop them.”

The measure under consideration — which received preliminary approval in the Missouri House of Representatives on Wednesday — would allow water exports only under permits lasting three years or less, and only when state natural resources officials deem that Missourians have enough water for their own “beneficial uses.” It would allow some ongoing water exports into neighboring states to continue and would give the state authority to impose conditions on any plans to send Missouri water flowing more widely.

Iowa has repeatedly rejected one company’s plan to export groundwater west. In Nebraska, efforts to tighten limits on exports remain contentious.

The Missouri legislation is expected to pass one final vote in the House early next week before proceeding to the state Senate, where Republican state Sen. Jason Bean is sponsoring a companion bill. Missouri’s annual legislative session ends May 17.

It is rare for bills to get bipartisan support in Missouri, with Republicans holding supermajorities in both chambers of the General Assembly, as well as the governorship. Bean said the importance of water is superseding politics.

“It’s a precious resource we have here in Missouri. We’re all being good stewards of it,” he said. “We want that for generations to come.”