In 1891, the Corps began building a six-foot deep navigation channel along the Missouri from the river’s mouth to Kansas City. In order to constrict the Missouri’s channel area and deepen the stream to six feet, Army engineers erected thousands of pile dikes and revetments along the river’s bank line. It took the Corps over four decades to complete that navigation channel. On June 27, 1932, in a ceremony at Kansas City’s waterfront, the bombastic Secretary of War, Patrick Hurley, declared the channel open to barge traffic. But barge operators stayed clear of the Missouri. The railroads and highways between St. Louis and Kansas City carried products cheaper and faster than the river route.
In the mid-1930s, the Roosevelt administration authorized and funded the extension of the six-foot navigation channel northward to Sioux City. Federal officials believed a longer navigation channel, which extended further inland and opened a larger market area to river traffic, would surely attract barge operators to the stream. In 1940, the Corps completed the navigation channel to Sioux City. But the hoped-for barge traffic still did not materialize because the railroads continued to provide a cost-effective alternative. Continue Reading »
Tagged Army Corps of Engineers, Boyer Chute, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gavin's Point Dam, John LaRandeau, Lisbon Bottom, Missouri River, Missouri River Flood of 1943, Missouri River Flood of 2011, Missouri River Navigation Channel, Missouri River Navigation Project, Patrick Hurley
Since the end of the last ice age, the Missouri River has experienced extreme fluctuations in volume. The Missouri has always bounced up and down because the weather across the Great Plains quickly shifts between hot and cold and between bone dry and monsoonal.
Since last year, Missouri Basin residents have witnessed firsthand the river’s capricious character. In June 2011, the Upper Missouri (the river northwest of Sioux City) hauled an astounding 13.8 million-acre-feet (MAF) of water. Never before, in 114 years of recording keeping, had the Upper Missouri carried so much water in one month. By the end of 2011, a total of 62.3 (MAF) entered the Upper Missouri. That equaled two and a half times the upper river’s normal annual runoff of 24.8 MAF. Last year’s runoff shattered the previous high flow record of 49 MAF, set back in 1997. Continue Reading »
Recently, the Omaha District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the organization charged with overseeing the management of the reach of the Missouri River through southeast South Dakota, western Iowa, and eastern Nebraska, announced that it has begun repairing the Missouri River navigation channel between Sioux City, Iowa, and Rulo, Nebraska, a distance of 116 river miles. During last year’s historic flood, the Missouri’s powerful currents destroyed the Army’s wingdams and revetments in dozens of locations south of Sioux City. For example, near Tekamah, Nebraska, the Missouri blew out its riprapped banks, outflanked a series of wingdams, and cut deep side channels through soft, sugary alluvium. At Decatur, Nebraska, the Mighty Missouri almost toppled over the Decatur Bridge after it burrowed a 50-foot deep hole into the bridge’s east abutment. Continue Reading »
Tagged Chuck Grassley, Corn Grower's Association, Corps of Engineers, Decatur Bridge, Farm Bureau, MidAmerican Energy, Missouri River Bank Stabilization and Navigation Project, Missouri River Navigation Channel, Missouri River Navigation Project, Omaha District, Terry Branstad
On May 9, 2012, the Army Corps of Engineers will cut the discharge rate from Gavin’s Point Dam to zero, yes zero. That means no water will exit through the structure’s power tunnels or spillway gates. The Army must stop the flow of water through the dam in order to inspect it for any damages. Last year, the Missouri’s powerful floodwaters pounded the structure, especially its spillway. The Army wants to know just what the Missouri did to the dam. Without water pouring through Gavin’s Point Dam, the Missouri downstream through southeastern South Dakota and western Iowa will drop to a record low level. It remains to be seen just how low the Missouri will go. Much depends on tributary inflows. If the James and Big Sioux rivers do not dump large volumes of rainwater into the Missouri, we can expect the river at Sioux City to diminish to a trickle. We do know that during the eight hours the Army pinches off the river’s flow, the Missouri will drop to one of its lowest levels ever, possibly lower than at any time since the glacial formation of the stream 30,000 years ago. Continue Reading »
It has been almost seven months since the end of the Great Flood of 2011. In the intervening months, it has become clear that the Army Corps must change how it manages the Missouri River. Missouri Valley residents cannot go back to “business as usual” along the Mighty Mo. To do so invites disaster. But what must change?
Lower valley farmers, represented by the Farm Bureau Federation, the Corn Grower’s Association, and the Missouri Levee and Drainage District Association want the rapid reconstruction of old, misaligned levees, as well as the flood-prone navigation channel. Those two antiquated hydraulic systems worsened flooding last year and will contribute to flooding in the years ahead. But the members of those three organizations want to be able to raise corn and soybeans (which are now fetching record prices) on every conceivable acre in the lower valley, so they are aggressively promoting a policy that substantially increases the probability of another major flood. Unfortunately, the farm lobby is gambling with the safety of the lower valley in order to maximize farm income. Continue Reading »
On December 23, 2011, President Obama signed into a law an emergency appropriation for the Missouri Basin. On the face it, the multi-million-dollar appropriation appeared to be a godsend for residents of the Missouri Valley, because it allows the Corps to rebuild its damaged Missouri River hydraulic system of dams, levees, and navigational structures. For example, in the coming year, the Army plans on spending $51.9 million to repair Garrison Dam and another $10.5 million on the rehabilitation of Gavin’s Point Dam. Fixing the big dams is a proper expenditure of federal funds. If the dams remained in a state of disrepair, they would be far more likely to fail during the next flood. But the expenditure of untold millions on the lower valley’s defunct navigation channel and improperly aligned levee system represents an abject waste of federal dollars. Continue Reading »
Tagged Brigadier General John McMahon, Corn Grower's Association, Farm Bureau Federation, Garrison Dam, Gavin's Point Dam, Missouri Basin, Missouri River, Missouri River Barge Industry, Missouri River Levee, Missouri River Navigation Project, President Barack Obama, Steve King
It’s been almost six months since the end of the Missouri River flood. Since then, the upstream reservoirs have been drained of their floodwaters, the lower Missouri Valley has dried out, and the Corps has commenced the reconstruction of damaged dams, levees, and channelization structures. To add to the apparent good news, officials recently stated that the lack of snow in the mountains and dry conditions across the prairie-plains region have dramatically reduced the probability of flooding along the Missouri main-stem in 2012. All appears well along the Missouri. The worst is behind us – or so it seems. But before we engage in a collective sigh of relief, we should recognize that big, big problems still confront the residents of the Missouri basin. Continue Reading »
Tagged Blake Hurst, Brigadier General John McMahon, Claire McCaskill, Corn Grower's Association, Farm Bureau Federation, Gavin's Point Dam, Jay Nixon, Missouri Levee and Drainage District Association, Missouri River, Missouri River Degradation, Missouri River Flood 2011, Missouri River Navigation Project, Roy Blunt, Tom Waters
Neither God, nor freak rain events, or the tiny piping plover caused the Missouri River flood of 2011. Rather, humans, and their ignorance, greed, and hubris, brought the floodwaters down upon this area.
The Army Corps deserves much of the blame for the flood. The Army kept the Montana and Dakota reservoirs high when the impoundments should have been low. Consequently, the reservoirs did not have enough storage space to capture the descending super flood. To prevent the dams from being overtopped and washed away, the Army released unprecedented amounts of water from Gavin’s Point Dam. Continue Reading »
The Missouri River once carried impressive amounts of suspended sediment. That sediment found its way into the stream from the prairie-pothole region of North Dakota, the badlands of South Dakota, the short-grass plains of northeastern Nebraska, and the tall grass prairies of Iowa. It came in many forms, including fine granules of sand, tiny particles of clay, bits of pulverized coal, and even pea-sized gravel. It floated, rolled, and spun its way downstream. A portion of it spilled onto the valley lowlands during the Missouri’s annual floods. Some of it became sandbars or islands. A percentage of it flowed all the way to the Mississippi and beyond. The Missouri acted as a conveyor belt, moving soils from the Rocky Mountains and northern plains to and thru the agricultural Midwest. According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the annual suspended sediment load past Omaha equaled 100,375,000 tons. That was enough goop to fill 5,500 railroad cars (with fifty ton capacities) every single day. Continue Reading »
In mid-October 2011, Brigadier General John McMahon, head of the Northwestern Division, wrote a widely circulated op-ed piece on the future management of the Missouri River. In the article, the general acknowledged that the Army’s Missouri River hydraulic system of dams, levees, and channelization structures failed to halt this year’s flood and it would not stop the next super flood. He wrote, “We know it [the hydraulic system] cannot handle the most extreme of flood events.”
McMahon stated that additional inputs of technology (such as dams or levees) would not solve the flooding problem along the Missouri. Instead, the Missouri basin needed a new, non-structural flood mitigation program. Such a program should include new zoning laws limiting or prohibiting construction in the floodplain, property easements to allow the river access to its former floodplain during high flow episodes, and the repositioning of levees. The Missouri, according to McMahon, must have more room to maneuver. Continue Reading »
