Missouri River outreach: North Dakota stakeholders press basin-wide coordination and say in transfers

Ken Royce, program manager for the Missouri River Joint Water Board, and Jim Schmidt of the Upper Missouri Water Association summarized a March stakeholder meeting in Kansas City intended to respond to aggressive press coverage from downstream interests.

Royce said the North Dakota delegation stressed that upstream states contribute the flow that downstream users rely on and that North Dakota's current permitted withdrawals represent a small portion of total Missouri River flow. "We only use 0.1," Royce summarized when comparing permitted intake volumes to the river's total flows, a point he used to push back on rhetoric that framed the basin relationship as a "water war." The meeting gathered representatives from a range of downstream groups, including a Missouri coalition, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and large urban and agricultural water users.

Speakers told the committee that the larger concern among downstream interests is precedent: if transfers across continental divides or other basin boundaries are widely accepted, the argument goes, it may be used elsewhere to justify large-scale interbasin exports. Royce and Schmidt urged coordinated basin advocacy and stakeholder engagement to ensure upper-basin interests are represented in any federal or interstate policy discussions.

Schmidt said the Kansas City meeting underscored the need for a basin-wide coalition to coordinate responses to potential out-of-basin demands and federal processes. He characterized the outreach as stakeholder-driven (not a state policy action) and said it should be followed by further coordination among upper-basin states and water users.

The committee asked for further detail on legal and federal interactions, and Deloitte/DWR participants said federal agreements and Corps of Engineers relationships were considered in governance evaluations of the Red River project and would be addressed in final reports.

This account is drawn from testimony by Ken Royce (Missouri River Joint Water Board) and Jim Schmidt (Upper Missouri Water Association) during the Water Topics Overview Committee meeting.