Fracking vs. Farming?

A water battle erupts over water use for Mississippi shipping and fracking (h/t nc links):

Fogarty says the Coast Guard has deployed four additional cutters to St. Louis running almost 24/7 to help set and reset navigation markers to designate the ever-shrinking shipping channel.
But even though the Coast Guard will make the call on whether the shipping channel in St. Louis will remain open, its ultimately the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who controls the fate of river commerce.
The Corps' decision to hold back water in reservoirs on the Missouri River is part of a set plan to conserve water for the spring shipping season and recreational use.
But people downstream on the Mississippi need that water right now.
“We estimate that $7 billion in cargo will stop moving on the Mississippi River if a nine-foot channel cannot be maintained through the winter months,” says Craig Philip, CEO of Ingram Barge Company. Ingram Barge is based in Tennessee.
Cutting the flow from dams in South Dakota will reduce water levels in St. Louis by 3 to 4 feet. Realizing that this might effectively kill shipping on the Mississippi over the near term, a group of Midwest politicians including Illinois Senator Dick Durbin are asking President Obama to declare an economic emergency and authorize the Army Corps to reopen the dams.
“This could be an economic catastrophe,” Durbin says.  “Let me be specific, by early this spring we need to be moving chemicals up the Mississippi River from Louisiana, so farmers have them for their spring planting.  Remember, they just went through a tough tough year in Illinois, so many of them are anxious for a comeback.”
But upstream states are saying, “not so fast.”  South Dakota, for example, is calling dibs on millions of gallons of water for use in the states oil-fracking boom.
Even Senator Durbin admits that asking the President to settle what amounts to a water-war between states is a dicey prospect.
“Clearly we’re in, maybe a zero-sum situation,” Durbin says. “We may be able to help our commerce downstream, but if we do it at the expense of those communities and states upstream, you can understand, they’re not going to stand by for this and I’m not sure I would either.”

Water requirements will end up limiting the scale of fracking, especially in the West.   This will be interesting, as it pits conservative interests against one another.