Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Waste, Superfund and Oversight Management Mike Rounds (R-SD) held a hearing on Thursday in North Sioux City, SD, focused on the management of the Missouri River since the 2011 flood.
“The United States Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for managing the Missouri River to meet the needs of both the Corps and the surrounding communities,” Rounds said in his opening statement at the “Five Years from the Flood: Oversight of the Army Corps’ Management of the Missouri River and Suggestions for Improvement” hearing. “In order for this to be successful, management of the river should always be done with extensive communication among stakeholders and a well-founded understanding of the needs of state and local governments, agriculture, recreation and economic interests – all of which depend on proper management of the Missouri River.”
The Missouri River flooded in 2011 following record snowfall in the Rocky Mountains of Montana and Wyoming combined with near-record spring rainfall in central and eastern Montana. The National Weather Service reported that almost one year’s worth of rain fell over the upper Missouri River basin in the second half of May 2011. As a result, record amounts of water were released by all six major Missouri River dams to prevent overflow. The releases caused flooding to threaten numerous towns and cities along the river from Montana to Missouri, including Bismarck, ND; Pierre and Dakota Dunes, SD; South Sioux City and Omaha, NE; Sioux City, IA; and Kansas City and Jefferson City, MO.
“The flood caused more than $2 billion dollars in damages and resulted in five fatalities,” Rounds said. “Four thousand homes were flooded. Roads were destroyed and agricultural land was ruined. Entire communities were under attack from the 2011 flood, largely left to fend for themselves. The Federal Emergency Management Administration, or FEMA, issued disaster declarations in each state in this region.
“In our state capital of Pierre and neighboring Fort Pierre, residents were given less than one week to prepare for what would be one of the worst floods in 60 years. After the flood, the city’s streets, sewage system, storm sewers, parks and electrical systems suffered unprecedented damage that cost millions of dollars to repair. The recovery took months. Citizens are still paying for the damages.”
A Government Accountability Office report in 2014 found that improving existing hydrologic data and collecting new soil moisture, plains snowpack, and archeological flood and drought data would be of aid to the Corps in future release decisions, as well as potentially improving long-term forecasting models. A 2014 Water Resources Reform bill, known as WRRDA, then authorized the Corps to coordinate with various government agencies for the creation of a soil moisture and snowpack monitoring network in the Upper Missouri River Basin.
“Since the flood, we have also been confronted with several other issues involving the Army Corps’ management of the Missouri River,” Rounds said. “In 2008, the Army Corps issued Real Estate Guidance Policy Letter Number 26. This directive required municipal and industrial water users from the Missouri River Mainstem Reservoirs to acquire a water storage contract from the Corps before the Corps would issue an access easement for a pump site. Since the issuance of this guidance policy, the Corps has been seemingly unable or unwilling to issue access easements to South Dakotans seeking to utilize water from the Missouri.
“Additionally, the Corps has been undertaking surplus water studies and engaging in a rulemaking effort to standardize how the Corps will charge citizens for surplus water storage. The 2014 WRRDA bill prohibited the Corps from charging a fee for surplus water for 10 years. This prohibition should be permanent – South Dakotans should not be required to pay a fee of any kind for using water from the Missouri River.
“Proper management of the Missouri River is vital to life in the Midwest. We depend on the Missouri River not only for recreation, but for agriculture and irrigation, shipping and hydroelectric power. The Missouri River is vital to our livelihood and our economy.”