Topeka ? Gov. Kathleen Sebelius criticized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Friday for its plans to release water from reservoirs in her state as a way to boost flows on the Missouri River, and she suggested the corps’ policy of protecting barge traffic on the Missouri was decades out of date.

It’s a position that puts her at odds with political and business leaders in Missouri and other downriver states, who have pressed the corps to keep the water level in the Missouri high enough to allow for barge traffic. Sebelius said while barge traffic was vital 40 years ago, “it is really not any longer.”

“Part of it is that the corps’ management scheme needs to be revised, a lot of us feel,” she said at a news conference. “Really, a lot of the reservoirs, both for irrigation and recreation, are now equally important.”

Support for the river’s recreation industry, mainly sport fishing on reservoirs in Montana and the Dakotas, has left leaders in those states on the same side of the river flow debate as environmentalists, who want the river’s flow cut for the benefit of three endangered or threatened species — the least tern, piping plover and pallid sturgeon.

It’s a side Sebelius appeared to join Friday, a move that drew a sharp response across the border in Missouri.

A spokeswoman for Missouri Gov. Bob Holden, Mary Still, said barge traffic remained an important facet of the Midwestern economy. It’s a means for farmers to transport their grain and creates competition that helps contain rail shipping rates, she said.

“Missouri still considers barge traffic to be an important part of its economy and agriculture,” she said. “It’s important to all the economies in the Heartland.”

Still defended the corps’ plan, noting that the Missouri flows into the Mississippi River, where barge traffic was suspended for four days last week because of low flow. She said keeping barge traffic going “helps our farmers.”

“It provides competition for rail,” she said. “You want more competition if you’re moving grain.”

Messages left at two corps offices were not immediately returned Friday night.

The corps said this week it planned to release water from Kansas’ Tuttle Creek, Perry and Milford lakes into the Kansas River, which flows into the Missouri, as a way of conserving water in the Missouri River’s three largest reservoirs upriver, which are 20 feet to 25 feet below normal. It plans to release water from Tuttle and Milford in September and from Perry in October.

It would be the ninth time in 23 years the corps has released water from Kansas reservoirs destined for the Missouri River.

Officials in the eight Missouri River basin states — Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri — have argued about the river’s management for years.

The debate has played out this year in federal court, as a judge in Washington sided with conservationists and ordered the corps to cut the river’s flow. The corps refused, saying its hands were tied by a conflicting court ruling in Nebraska.

Another federal judge in Minnesota, who recently took control of all Missouri River lawsuits, later ruled there was no conflict and said the order to reduce water flows would stand.