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A cleansing on the Missouri River
By George Berndt

Early in 2007 an unusual landmark disappeared from the middle of the Missouri River between Ponca, Nebraska, and Elk Point, South Dakota. For 75 years the 45-foot-tall (14 m) concrete pier (photo) stood sentinel with its partner on the Nebraska bank, part of the support system for a natural gas pipeline built in 1932 by the Northern Natural Gas and Pipe Line Company. Construction predated the establishment of Nebraska’s Ponca State Park by two years, with the original piers built on opposite banks. For about two decades thereafter, park visitors viewed with amazement the world’s largest pipeline bridge. By 1950 the river’s natural flow ate away at the South Dakota bank, leaving that pier in the middle of the river. As a safety precaution the company dismantled the pipeline and the towers, but the piers remained.

The story of the mid-channel pier became more complicated when Congress amended the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1978, designating the reach between Gavins Point Dam and Ponca State Park as a national recreational river. As part of that process, an "Umbrella Report" prepared by the United States Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation in 1977 indicated that such structures "must be removed upon termination of useful life."

Since the 1950s, a pier that once helped support a gas pipeline stood in a reach of the Missouri River designated in 1978 as a wild and scenic river (inset). Dismantled in early 2007 when river volume was very low, the pier (above) was about 25 feet (8 m) high with 12-foot-diameter (4 m) pillars beneath a concrete block 20 feet (6 m) high, 45 feet wide (14 m), and 3 feet (1 m) thick, and supported a steel superstructure and two 132-foot-tall (40 m) towers. Its partner—on the Nebraska side of the river a quarter mile away—remains standing.

Credit: NPS/Wayne Werkmeister

The arrival of National Park Service operations staff in the early 1990s led to conversations about the pier’s removal. In summer 2002, national park staff organized a meeting with Northern Natural Gas, the United States Coast Guard, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission to discuss the pier, its ownership, and the legality of its location in the river. The parties soon established that Northern Natural Gas owned the pier and that the Coast Guard had never issued an original permit authorizing its presence in the river. It then followed that the pier had to be removed or permitted. The only way to permit the pier was to show intended beneficial use, but its beneficial use ended in 1950. The only option left was removal.

The Missouri River as it appears today—without the pier.

Credit: NPS/Wayne Werkmeister

Under the park’s steady prodding, the removal effort gained momentum but permit issues slowed actual progress. By 2006 the necessary formalities for removal had been observed, but receding waters revealed a substantial channel between a prospective staging area on the South Dakota bank and the pier itself, complicating access. The right conditions finally materialized in late 2006 to allow demolition and removal of the concrete pier. Removal began on 8 January 2007 and ended several weeks later. Throughout the course of this outstanding public-private partnership, Northern Natural Gas proved to be an exemplary corporate citizen and cooperated wholeheartedly. In the end the project concluded another step in the national campaign to enhance the natural and recreational values of the Missouri National Recreational River.

George Berndt
Chief of Interpretation, Missouri National Recreational River