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where there haven't been objections.
• Nearly 60 percent of the new shallow-water habitat -- or 12,000 acres -- is supposed to be built in Missouri, where the 2,341-mile river cuts a 543-mile path. But only a handful of projects were completed in the state before concerns were raised in 2007 about what the corps was doing with the dirt it was excavating to create a side channel at Jameson Island near the village of Arrow Rock in the central part of the state.
• While state officials debated the project, floodwaters washed out the final stretch of dirt needed to reconnect the side channel to the river. However, farmers complain water exiting the side channel re-enters the river in such a way that it erodes a levee that protects farmland. Although the corps says the levee concerns are overstated, it's offered to make changes.
• But fixes to Jameson Island and construction of other side channel shallow-water habitat projects planned for Missouri have been stalled amid the ongoing permit discussion.
• "Our inability to construct over the past six years in Missouri has put us way behind," said Steve Fischer, the head of the corps' Missouri River Recovery Program, adding that the agency has a target of completing 6,000 acres of shallow-water habitat projects by 2014, a goal designed to keep the project on track. "At some point the Fish and Wildlife Service could find us in jeopardy of not complying with the biological opinion. It's not a comfortable position to be in."
• For part of the six-year span, the Jameson Island project was held up while an environmental study was conducted on claims that dumping excavated soil into the river contributes to a "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico. Experts blame the low-oxygen, or hypoxic, conditions primarily on farm fertilizer runoff brought by the Mississippi River, which the Missouri empties into. The nutrients cause oxygen depleting algae blooms.
• The National Academy of Sciences found in 2010 that the corps' plans to dump more soil into the river wouldn't significantly affect the dead zone in the gulf. It estimated that the Corps' plan would add 34 million tons of sediment more per year into the Missouri River, which would boost sediment flowing to the Louisiana coast by 10 to 20 percent.
• Farmers, however, aren't sold and have fought hard against Jameson Island, fearing it will begin a series of projects that will exacerbate the problem, and they'll get blamed. Already, environmentalists want more done to reduce fertilizer runoff and animal waste making it into waterways.
• "As the ag industry works to reduce the hypoxia levels in the gulf, it would do the

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