The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday it will increase the flow of water from four dams along the Missouri River in South Dakota in order to relieve what it said was the third highest August runoff since 1898.
Jody Farhat, chief of the Corps' Missouri River Basin Water Management Division, said excess water from the upper basin reservoir system would be drained at the lowest possible rate for the longest period of time. The process is designed to relieve the reservoirs without threatening downstream communities, among them Atchison and Leavenworth.
The Corps said heavy August rains in the upper parts of the Missouri River basin, which extends into Wyoming and Montana, swelled tributary rivers and increased runoff into the reservoir system. August runoff in the area above Sioux City, Iowa, alone was measured 3.2 million acre feet (MAF), which is 241 percent more than normal, the Corps said. The 2014 total forecast for that area is 35.6 million acre feet, 141 percent more than a normal runoff of 25.2 MAF.