The Missouri River flood fight reached a milestone when the last of the six big upstream reservoirs fell to its normal full level Wednesday.
"There is still a way to go before this is over," said Jody Farhat, the Army Corps of Engineers' chief water manager in Omaha. "Our goal has always been to evacuate all the flood-control storage before the 2012 runoff season begins, and we are on our way to achieving that."
The achievement occurred Wednesday at Fort Randall reservoir in South Dakota.
All of the reservoirs on the upper Missouri are now out of what the corps calls the "exclusive flood control zone."
This zone is the top 6 percent of storage available in the reservoir system. It holds 4.7 million acre feet of water. Fort Randall represented 985,000 acre feet of that total.
The six reservoirs held 66.3 million acre-feet of water on Wednesday. The corps needs to bring the storage down to 56.8 million acre-feet before March 1 to provide enough room for next year's runoff.
Col. Robert Ruch, Omaha District commander, said the flood fight isn't over yet.
"There is still high water on the levees and in the flood plain, and while this is the first step toward decreasing the water level, we need to stay vigilant until the water recedes," he said.
Releases from Gavins Point Dam on the Nebraska-South Dakota border are at 150,000 cubic feet per second.
They are to begin decreasing by 5,000 cfs at the end of the week until reaching 90,000 cfs at the end of August. Releases are expected to be 40,000 cfs at the end of September.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1127, david.hendee@owh.com
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