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Taum Sauk Area Water Quality
Response
Initial Environmental Response and Stabilization
The Missouri Department of Natural Resources is monitoring water quality in the Taum Sauk area. There are several agencies investigating the cause of the failure. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has the sole responsibility for regulating the facility.
"One of the first assignments after the failure of the reservoir was to get together all the resource agencies, federal, private and state agencies, that had vested interests in the aquatic resources," said Randy Crawford, Chief of the Water Protection Section of the Department of Natural Resources' Environmental Services Program. "We got together and found out what each group was doing, what needed to be done and began collecting the information that was needed."
The Department of Natural Resources has established a project office at Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park to oversee the efforts related to mitigating the environmental damage caused by the breach.
The department has established monitoring stations to measure turbidity, or cloudiness, in the water at several locations in the Taum Sauk area.
As of Feb. 22, the department had issued three emergency declarations ordering Ameren UE to remove sediment and debris in or around the river essentially to protect water quality. In addition to those three orders, the department has issued numerous letters and has an on-scene coordinator in the park every day directing the activity that goes on. The on-scene coordinator directs how Ameren UE can do some of the removal activity in order to protect water quality.
As of Feb. 22, the department had conducted three public meetings to inform the public on what is going on with the environmental stabilization. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources is working with the local community and the Missouri Division of Tourism to let people around the state know that conditions in the river are maybe not as bad as initially reported by some of the larger media outlets. Businesses in the Taum Sauk area received calls telling them they heard that their campgrounds were destroyed, which was not true. Johnson's Shut-In's State Park campgrounds were destroyed but none of the private campgrounds were destroyed.
