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I was in the middle of writing a on the historic conundrum of Missouri River flooding, and the former director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, now an attorney in private practice who often represents agricultural interests, told me to play nice.

Missouri River politics are nasty and often end up in the muck that gives the Big Muddy its name. Farmers are pitted against environmentalists. Upper Basin states such as the Dakotas battle with Lower Basin states such as Missouri. About the only unifying factor is that nearly everybody blames the Army Corps of Engineers for, well, everything.

And so it was in federal court this week.

In a potentially landmark case, federal Senior Judge Nancy Firestone and against the federal government and environmental interests in a lawsuit that could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The farmers and other business interests charge that, in an attempt to produce river flows that would improve habitat for certain endangered species in the Missouri River, such as the pallid sturgeon, the federal government contributed to flooding that devastated farms.

The farmers, many of them in Missouri, are calling that an illegal 鈥渢aking鈥� of their property and are seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation.

In 2011, as one of the floods that led to the lawsuit was swamping farmland and cities across the Midwest headed toward 最新杏吧原创, Shorr asked me to see things from the farmers鈥� standpoint. He knew that I tended to believe 鈥� and still do 鈥� that the agricultural industry鈥檚 insistence that the Missouri River be maintained for navigation was a major contributor to increased flooding. Try not to pit farmers vs. environmentalists, Shorr suggested.

Today, I鈥檓 following his advice.

Most environmentalists I鈥檝e talked to believe Firestone鈥檚 ruling is abhorrent.

Here鈥檚 Brad Walker, the recently retired Big Rivers director for the : 鈥淭he damage that has been done to the Missouri River is likely unprecedented in this country yet the court seems to consider it acceptable and a baseline for how far the common good can be ignored and trampled on.鈥�

And Robert Kelley Schneiders, one of the nation鈥檚 foremost experts on Missouri River policy: 鈥淭he ruling represents a body blow to those individuals and groups working for a biologically diverse and environmentally sustainable river system.鈥�

Walker and Schneiders are not wrong. But I choose to see hope in Firestone鈥檚 ruling. It might be the impetus to get environmentalists and farmers on the same page when it comes to fixing nearly 100 years of bad river policy.

Firestone says the federal government 鈥渢ook鈥� the farmers鈥� property and they should be compensated. She鈥檚 probably right. But the solution isn鈥檛 to pay them and let them go back to farming land that in many cases they never should have had in the first place. If the corps responds to the lawsuit by ignoring the environmental need for a spring rise, and changes river policy to protect the farm land, it will simply shift where the next lawsuit comes from.

The solution, as I wrote in a series of Post-Dispatch editorials in 2011 under the title is to let the river roam, as it once did, and as it must do again, particularly in the age of unpredictable climate change. The proper response to the taking of farmers鈥� land over the past couple of decades isn鈥檛 to compensate them, but to actually take the land. Buy the farmers out for good. Bring back the wetlands and chutes that naturally allowed the river to flood in the flood plain that has long since been degraded. It won鈥檛 be cheap, but in the long run it will cost less than repeating this exercise every couple of years.

The barge industry growth contemplated in 1944 when the government launched its plan to try to tame the Missouri River never came, so stop pretending. Take out the river dikes and channels that make the river run too fast. Take out many of the levees 鈥� private and federal 鈥� meant to protect bottomland farms that never should have been there.

Even though many of their ancestors were given the land for free, pay the farmers what they are due, but do it one time, instead of again, and again and again, every time the river floods.

The great irony of the ruling, Washington University geology professor Bob Criss says, is it validates what environmentalists like him have been saying for years, that the corps鈥� structures along the Missouri River greatly contributed to increased flooding in the past decade.

Looked at through that lens, Firestone鈥檚 ruling could bring long-warring sides of the intractable river problem together.