Honoring the historical significance of and reaffirming continued Congressional support for commercial navigation on the Missouri River.

Whereas the Missouri River encompasses 529,350 square miles, drains one sixth of the United States, and flows 2,341 miles from Three Forks, Montana, to St. Louis, Missouri;

Whereas Native Americans used the Missouri River as a trade and transportation corridor long before European explorers came to the region;

Whereas in 1673, Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet were the first Europeans to see the Missouri River during an expedition down the Mississippi River;

Whereas French Colonists used the Missouri River as early as 1723 to connect the ends of the New France Empire which stretched from New Orleans to Montréal;

Whereas the Mackay and Evans Expedition of 1795 navigated the Missouri River in search for a route to the Pacific and created the first detailed maps of the river;

Whereas in 1804 President Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to find a route to the Pacific by navigating the Missouri River;

Whereas navigation on the Missouri River led to settlement and development of the Dakotas and Montana;

Whereas the Rivers and Harbors Acts of 1912, 1917, 1925, 1927, 1930, and 1935 each affirmed navigation on the Missouri River to be the goal of the stakeholders, occupants, the basin’s elected officials, and the Federal Government;

Whereas the 1934 “308 Report” on the Missouri River, by Captain Theodore Wyman, Jr., identified numerous navigation projects that could be completed;

Whereas after severe spring flooding in 1934 the House Committee on Flood Control approved a resolution on May 13, 1934, which directed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to prepare an additional survey of the Missouri River;

Whereas in October of 1944, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation agreed to a plan for the Missouri River written by Corps General Lewis A. Pick and Bureau of Reclamation Director W. Glenn Sloan;

Whereas the “Pick-Sloan Plan” provided direction to the Flood Control Act of 1944, the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1945, and the future of the Missouri River;

Whereas the Flood Control Act of 1944 turned the Missouri River basin into the largest reservoir system in North America and authorized 8 purposes for this system, including commercial navigation;

Whereas the river has carried up to 6,600,000,000 pounds of commercial cargo in a single year;

Whereas in 2000 navigation on the Missouri river moved 7,100,000 bushels of corn and 5,100,000 bushels of soybeans;

Whereas the June 4, 2003, August 16, 2005, and February 8, 2008, decisions of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that navigation was a dominant function of the Flood Control Act of 1944;

Whereas in the 2003 decision the Court went so far as to say, The dominant functions of the Flood Control Act were to avoid flooding and to maintain downstream navigation; and

Whereas as our Nation’s rail and highway systems are increasingly congested, barges on the Missouri River will become an even more attractive shipping option: Now, therefore, be it