Top U.S. Army Corps of Engineers personnel in charge of managing the Missouri River's dam system exchanged internal emails

BISMARCK, N.D. — Top U.S. Army Corps of Engineers personnel in charge of managing the Missouri River's dam system exchanged internal emails in late April that described the upcoming flood season as "a huge water year" and possibly "one of the wettest years on record."

But North Dakota water officials say serious concerns were not publicly conveyed until a month later, after heavy rains fell in eastern Montana, western South Dakota and northern Wyoming, and the Army Corps said it would be forced to substantially increase Missouri River dam releases to account for the rain and melting mountain snow.

Officials say by then it was too late for riverside residents to buy flood insurance, which does not take effect until 30 days after it was purchased, to cover resulting damage. The Federal Emergency Management Agency says the Missouri River flood officially began June 1, shortly after the corps began drastically increasing water flows through North Dakota's Garrison Dam, so only policies bought by May 2 would have taken effect in time.

If property owners knew what the corps knew in late April, more may have bought coverage that would have provided some compensation for their ruined properties, said North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple and Todd Sando, chief engineer for the North Dakota Water Commission.

Jody Farhat, chief of the corps' Missouri River basin water management office in Omaha, Neb., said the Army Corps is not "responsible for cluing people to" buy flood insurance.

"If people live in a flood plain — even back in February and March, we were saying it was going to be a wet year," she said. "People could have made those decisions on their own, long before then."

This year's Missouri River flooding has forced thousands to flee their homes, inundated farmland and caused millions of dollars of damage in river towns from Montana to Nebraska.

An Associated Press review of more than 8,300 pages of internal Army Corps emails and documents from Jan. 1 through June 10, obtained through a federal Freedom of Information Act request, show that for most of that time the agency projected confidence that it had enough water storage space in its six Missouri River dams to handle spring flooding. The AP also requested North Dakota Water Commission documents from the same period.

The communications do not contradict Army Corps assertions that officials believed they were prepared until unexpectedly heavy spring rains combined with melting snowpack to cause an untenable rise in water levels. Water releases from the Garrison Dam in western North Dakota were subsequently increased to 150,000 cubic feet per second, a volume five times greater than the corps had planned for the summer months.

The agency has since defended its river management against sharp criticism. Members of Congress have promised hearings on the flood's causes, and a group of Missouri River state governors met last week in Omaha and pledged to work together with the corps to make flood control a top priority.

In early March, Farhat said the corps was well prepared for the spring flooding season.

"The important thing is that the main stem reservoir system has plenty of room to store floodwaters if necessary," Farhat said in a March 4 statement, echoing sentiments voiced in previous months.

On April 26, Col. Robert Ruch, commander of the Corps' Omaha district, wrote to a number of Corps officials: "The bottom line is that we are buttoned up and ready for high water."

But Sando, in an April 20 letter to Brig. Gen. John McMahon, commander of the Army Corps division that includes the Missouri River dams, said he was concerned the corps "forecast does not adequately address the current conditions in the basin and the potential for above-normal precipitation this summer."

On April 20, Lake Sakakawea and Lake Oahe had some of the highest elevations on record for that month, Sando's letter said. "The downstream discharges seem low compared to the mountain snowpack, and the current availability of flood storage," he wrote.

McMahon replied that the corps constantly monitors water runoff.

By April 25, Farhat was expressing concern about "critical issues" with potential flooding.

"In other words, we must begin evacuating flood waters from the main stem system (as soon as possible)," she wrote in an email to Missouri state Rep. Randy Asbury, R-Higbee. "This may end up being one of the wettest years on record."

Still, increased water releases from the Missouri's upstream dams were delayed in late April and May because of flooding between Omaha and Kansas City, Mo., caused by local rainstorms.

The corps issued two public statements May 6 outlining comparatively small increases in water releases from North Dakota's Garrison Dam and the Gavins Point dam, in southeastern South Dakota.

The next statement, issued May 23 after the heavy rains in Montana and the Dakotas, proclaimed: "Lots more water coming down the Missouri River — now!"

Corps spokeswoman Monique Farmer said it ultimately was late May's heavy rains that "changed our operations and took away the flexibility of our original reservoir release plans."

Few residents along the river had flood insurance coverage when the high water hit, according to FEMA.

Only 470 households in Bismarck, a city of 61,000, and 80 households in neighboring Mandan, a city of about 18,000, had coverage through July 29, the agency said. Only 43 households in the 13,600-resident city of Pierre, S.D., had policies. And in Union County, S.D., home to Dakota Dunes, a posh town of 2,500 with homes valued at more than $1 million, 172 households bought flood insurance.

Dalrymple said he would like to see the Army Corps translate its reams of data on river flows, dam releases and water runoff in ways that allow ordinary people to analyze their own risks for flood damage.

"We need some kind of warning system that the public can comprehend easily, so that you don't have to be a water engineer to understand how to react to it," Dalrymple said.

Farmer said corps officials are available to help people interpret its data.

"We have worked very hard to keep the public informed of our operations, to make information understandable, and to keep people apprised of our reservoir release and flood fight operations," she said.

Online

Find hundreds of photos, video and up-to-the-minute flood news from the Journal and KCAU-TV news teams at siouxcityjournal.com.

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AberdeenNews.com | North Dakota governor to broach idea of state compact to manage Missouri River flood control

ArgusLeader.com | Missouri River Flooding 2011 flood questions pinned the US Army Corp of Engineers in a swirl of politics

http://www.argusleader.com/article/20110731/NEWS/107310314/Flood-questions-pinned-corps-swirl-politics

Jody Farhat had a problem.

It was June 3, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' water management chief for the Missouri River basin had just received word that construction on a private levee in Dakota Dunes had been delayed.

The contractors needed the corps to postpone stepping up releases from Gavins Point Dam - pivot point in the battle between upper and lower basin interests on the Missouri River - for an extra day.

"Don't feel we have much choice here," Farhat wrote other corps officials.

Brig. Gen. John McMahon, commander of the corps' Northwestern Division, replied soon after: "Roger. Thanks. This is a smart 'political' move IF it's supportable from a (water management) perspective."

The next day, another official jumped on the email thread: "You know the politics - We'll do what we need to do."

They agreed that news of the schedule change should, for now, stay with the corps.

"Of course, nothing public," engineer Paul Boyd wrote.

This exchange - one among thousands of email conversations obtained by the Argus Leader and the Gannett Washington Bureau under the Freedom of Information Act - illustrates the political considerations that underlie the corps' decision-making in the midst of one of the worst flood seasons in the river's history.

Emails include Farhat's communications from June 1 to June 23, when the corps announced that releases from Gavins Point Dam would climb to a peak of 160,000 cubic feet per second. As with email traffic previously released by the Argus Leader, many names were redacted.

The correspondence offers a window into the internal deliberation and political maneuvering behind the flood fight, as corps officials hustled to put out fires and squelch rumors, spin journalists and hold off politicians whose inquiries sharpened as flooding intensified across the basin.

In the end, contractors in Dakota Dunes needed only a few hours of breathing room, not a whole day. "No big deal," Farhat said last week.

She said, moreover, that while the corps strives for transparency in its decision-making, it does not make public all of its internal deliberations.

"We make a decision, then we tell people about it. ... In that case, we didn't change anything. Had we decided to wait a day, we would have made an announcement," she said.

'We don't have time to run what-if scenarios'

As public scrutiny of the corps swelled in June, so did interest from South Dakota's congressional delegation, correspondence shows.

On June 1, Jennifer Greer, a higher-up at the corps' Washington headquarters, set up a meeting between congressional leaders, including Sen. John Thune, and Maj. Gen. Bo Temple, the corps' acting commanding general.

The meeting was June 8, the same day corps officials decided to increase releases from Fort Peck in Montana, following overnight rains that doubled the amount of water flowing into the reservoir. After the meeting, Greer posted her notes.

Thune "didn't advocate the position (that floodwater should have been evacuated sooner), but it is what he is hearing," Greer wrote.

"SEN Thune - asked how influential is Fish and Wildlife would be if there were updates to the manual. ... SEN Thune suggested that if the Corps needed assistance to lessen such influence (including legislation) they were willing to help. MG Temple stated that he did not see this as a problem - it is a balancing issue, but thought all would work together."

A few days earlier, Thune aide David Schwietert had written to ask whether more of the system's flood-control zone could have been freed up sooner. The senator, he wrote, is "curious what the modeling would show if the Corps had released additional water from Garrison/Oahe starting at the beginning of this year. ... Something tells me that based on the amount of precipitation/ runoff that we've witnessed, it would still have likely required 100+ cfs out of both dams."

Schwietert had to follow up twice before getting a response, and corps officials ignored subsequent requests to clarify information, Thune spokeswoman Andi Fouberg said last week.

An official drafted a response June 23 to Schwietert and sent it to Farhat for vetting. "I thought that for this response I'd stick more to the talking points even though I did make a few modifications," the official wrote.

Farhat responded the next day: "I definitely agree with the approach to stick to the talking points. We don't have time to run what-if scenarios now."

Farhat said last week that her office gave Thune's office a preliminary estimate but that she couldn't spare the time or staff to run the analysis.

"We've had many requests like that - a lot of folks were, what if this, what if that - and what we told every one of them is, there's a time to do that kind of analysis, and it's not in the heat of the battle," she said.

On June 13, an aide for Sen. Tim Johnson sent questions about the timing of the releases. Kayla Eckert Uptmor, planning branch chief for the Omaha District, responded that "we had no basis on which to increase flows to historic levels until the extraordinary rainfall event which resulted in a record runoff in May."

'Pounding that message' on upstream rains

Corps officials would come to lean on this talking point as they combatted the criticism that more water should have been moved downriver sooner. Considering the amount of flood storage available in the system and the saturating rains in May, releasing the water earlier would have done little good anyway, they said.

"It is important that we keep pounding that message with the locals so there is no misunderstanding that this flooding has been caused by these heavy rains upstream," one official wrote.

On June 15, Rep. Kristi Noem's office asked the corps for historical data on dam releases, snowpack and rainfall in the upper basin. The aide also requested copies of communications between the corps and Fort Pierre Public Works Director Brad Lawrence, who had just been profiled in a Pierre Capitol Journal article in which he told of having warned the corps to beware a flood "of biblical proportions."

After a conference call with the aide, Anne Thimsen, McMahon wrote that the matter almost was closed.

"Once we provide some additional info to Anne today, we'll be mission complete including follow up to your discussion with Rep Noem yesterday, pending any additional questions from Anne," he wrote. "All good."

Corps monitored the press, its coverage

Behind the scenes, corps public affairs staff were busy fielding interview requests, tweaking talking points for officials to crib from rating media coverage. An article in The Daily Republic of Mitchell was called "surprisingly honest," and an official in Pierre said a reporter for KSFY-TV in Sioux Falls "has been doing very good coverage for the Corps."

In a few cases, staffers even put together dossiers on reporters who requested information.

Division counsel also helped shape messaging. One corps lawyer offered suggestions to Farhat and Omaha District Commander Col. Bob Ruch following a conference call.

"I would suggest rather than starting the response with the fact that we'll conduct an after action report (which some people might read as our admitting there was an error)," the lawyer wrote, "that we lead with the talking points that we operated the system (in accordance with) the master manual this spring and were well positioned to accept the runoff - mother nature threw us a curve ball in May with record rains. We can then certainly use the sound bite that we'll do an internal review and whether or not any studies leads to changes in the operation of the system remains to be seen."

All month, requests for help flooded Farhat's inbox. Some asked for help correcting misinformation; others addressed concerns of dam and levee safety.

On July 16, a corps spokeswoman received a call from someone in Dakota Dunes who said releases from Gavins Point Dam were listed at 160,000 cubic feet on the corps website.

"This is a concern for us," the spokeswoman wrote, "solely because the woman who called said she thought we were lying to 'the public' about releases and has already reported it to the media."

A division-level contingency operations officer replied to Farhat: "So were we releasing at 160k accidentally or just reporting accidentally the wrong information?" (The caller was looking raw, unscreened data, Farhat said last week.)

On June 20, after an overnight rainstorm doused the Pierre area, managers at Oahe Dam requested that outflows be reduced by 5,000 cubic feet to alleviate drainage problems in the city. An official in the Omaha district sent the request to Ruch. "Spoke with (redacted)," the official wrote. "He was asking as a goodwill gesture due to the rain. There are no impacts from 5K at this time. (redacted) understands that we will probably continue with the planned releases."

Missouri congressman created PR challenge

In Missouri, Rep. Sam Graves was a constant burr in the corps' saddle, accompanying top-level officials on tours of flooded areas - http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/227784-5-11-june-2011-1.html#document/p449/a29193">"this is not an ambush," a Graves staffer once had to assure a corps go-between - while elsewhere denouncing them to media and citizen groups.



Kansas City, Mo., District Commander Col. Tony Hoffman, discussing one such "windshield tour," mulled whom to send: "For us not to have a presence from the uniformed side would not be good for (Northwestern Division) politically and it could come back to bite us down the road."

After the tour, Division Programs Director Witt Anderson briefed other corps officials.

"Our visit and tour with Cong Graves and Cong Jenkins for several hours later in the day had quite a different flavor - Graves not so negative; I imagine he was playing to his constituents."

He continued: "One thing we can bet on is Graves will push for review of (the master manual). I noted in the initial brief to him that the hydrology this year is a new data point which we will be looking at re MM. He locked on to that. ... The CG's OpEd piece should help if the media pick it up."

Anderson was referring to a column the corps was preparing to counter an alarmist story that had run in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which predicted catastrophic dam failures on the river. Various officials were assembling a rebuttal under Ruch's byline.

The public affairs staff scouted news outlets for it, "aiming for Sunday circulation in the major dailies throughout the region," a corps spokeswoman wrote.

Through an aide, Graves also floated the idea of amending federal legislation to make flood control and navigation the only authorized purposes of Missouri management. He asked for feedback.

"I have serious reservations about being party to such a play — why would we?" McMahon wrote other officials. "At the behest of a single Member? Let's discuss before we respond - this just feeds the mistrust of us and the tension between upper and lower basin."

Meanwhile, the Department of Agriculture, Senate Agriculture Committee and other farm interests demanded estimates of how much farmland eventually might be inundated. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack was considering a trip to Hamburg, Iowa, site of a recent levee breach.

"Corps of Engineers needs to do a series of public mtngs with ag producers to fully brief them on possible scenarios," a White House Cabinet Affairs officer wrote. "They are in the dark while making decisions with regard to inputs on crops that may ultimately be destroyed."

The email was forwarded to McMahon, who replied: "Witt: Please organize this so it doesn't turn on us - interesting how long it took them to wake up."

Reach Cody Winchester at cwincheste@argusleader.com or 331-2320.

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GLOSSARY
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Northwestern Division is located in Portland, Ore. The Omaha District of the Northwestern Division includes eastern Montana, the Dakotas, Nebraska and Iowa. The Kansas City District includes Kansas and Missouri. Here are some frequent names and acronyms:
WM: water management
MRJIC: Missouri River Joint Information Center
BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front
FYSA: For Your Situational Awareness
MRAPS: Missouri River Authorized Purposes Study, a wide-ranging, congressionally authorized study of the Flood Control Act of 1944.
MLDDA: Missouri Levee and Drainage District Association
Maj. Gen. Bo Temple: Acting Commanding General of Army Corps of Engineers
Maj. Gen. William Grisoli: Deputy Commanding General for Civil and Emergency Operations
Jennifer Greer: Chief of the corps’ Future Directions Branch/Civil Work
Brig. Gen. John McMahon: Division Commander
Col. Robert Tipton: Deputy Division Commander
Witt Anderson: Division Programs Director
Col. Tony Hoffman: Kansas City District Commander
Col. Robert Ruch: Omaha District Commander
Jody Farhat: Water management chief for Omaha District
Kim Thomas: Readiness branch chief for Omaha District
Paul Boyd: Hydraulic engineer in Omaha District
Kayla Eckert Uptmor: Planning branch chief for Omaha District
Erik Blechinger: Omaha Deputy District Engineer, spokesman for the Missouri River Joint Information Center
Monique Farmer: Corps spokeswoman
Eileen Williamson: Corps spokeswoman
Kevin Wingert: Corps spokesman
Rex Goodnight: Engineering division chief for Kansas City District
John Remus: Chief of the Omaha District hydrological engineering branch
Tom and Karla Waters: Members of the Missouri Levee & Drainage District Association
Bill Lay: Member of the Missouri Levee & Drainage District Association

HELP REPORT THE STORY:

These stories are based on thousands of pages of emails and other documents obtained from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers by the Argus Leader and Gannett Washington Bureau under the Freedom of Information Act. Read through the correspondence below.

YOUR TIPS: We're interested in what you find. If you see something in these documents that you find interesting, please contact us:
Reporter Jonathan Ellis, 605-575-3629, jonellis@argusleader.com
Reporter Cody Winchester, 605-331-2320, cwincheste@argusleader.com
Managing Editor Patrick Lalley, 605-331-2291, plalley@argusleader.com
Or call the newsroom at 1-800-530-NEWS (6397)