Sioux Falls, S.D. - July 24, 2011 - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was warned from multiple sources early in the year that major flooding was likely on the Missouri River.
But by the time officials moved to "evacuate" upstream reservoirs in anticipation of snowmelt, they were hampered by downstream flooding that prevented them from releasing more water, internal emails show.
In January, Corps officials were aware of above-average snowpacks in the Rocky Mountains. And they had National Weather Service reports showing that soil conditions had water saturations as high as 99 percent in much of the Dakotas and Montana.
Until mid-April, officials were confident they could manage the situation without major flooding. But within a few weeks the situation unraveled, leading to the most serious flooding on the Missouri in decades.
The details about officials' developing understanding of the crisis come from thousands of pages of internal emails and reports obtained by the Argus Leader and Gannett Washington Bureau under the Freedom of Information Act. The request includes exchanges between Jody Farhat, the chief of the water management division for the Corps' Omaha District, and other top officials in the Corps as they struggled to manage the situation.
As flooding intensified, brought on by unusually high rainfalls, the Corps' response increasingly became scrutinized by state and federal political leaders up and down the river.
In the end, nearly everything that could go wrong did.
Now, as the flooding slowly recedes, political leaders in states along the Missouri River want to know what happened. Senators held a hearing last week.
Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad is scheduled to meet with governors of six other states and Corps officials on Aug. 19 in Omaha to discuss flood management on the Missouri.
While the states along the Missouri do have competing interests - shipping, recreation, wildlife protection - flood control is something they have in common.
"I think the governors want to understand one another," South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard said Friday. "I'm hoping that while we might disagree on some management practices of the Corps, we should be able to agree that the first priority is flood control."
N.D. officials sensed trouble after February forecasts
Even in January, there was growing alarm. North Dakota officials worried about mounting snowfall totals and they made their concerns known to the Corps.
On the lower end of the river, Bill Lay, a Missouri farmer and member of the Missouri Levee and Drainage District Association, sent Farhat an email asking if there was enough storage capacity in lower reservoirs to handle the impending melt.
Farhat responded that the system was in "excellent shape to capture this year's runoff and prevent flood damage downstream." While the snowpack was up, "at this time it doesn't appear to be more than we can handle," she wrote Lay.
On the last day of January, the six upper basin dams held 56.9 million acre feet, just 100,000 acre feet above the Corps' annual flood control pool. In an interview Friday, Farhat said that the situation was under control in January.
"Being a little bit ahead of normal on the first of January is not anything to be concerned about," she said. Snowpack normally peaks on April 15. It didn't happen this year.
"At a time we're expecting it to turn over and start melting, it rose," she said.
February's climate outlook brought more bad news: predictions of higher snowfalls in the northern Rockies and lower-than-normal temperatures leading to a late runoff.
North Dakota officials sensed trouble. They called a meeting Feb. 10 of state and federal officials in Bismarck. The aim was to get federal and state agencies preparing then for possible flooding.
"There was no sense of panic at this point," said Cecily Fong, a spokeswoman with North Dakota's Department of Emergency Services who attended the meeting. "This was us getting together with all the people we felt had skin in the game."
On Feb. 11, a Corps memo noted "abnormally high snowpack and high snow-water equivalents throughout the Omaha District. The unusual conditions are widespread across a large geographical area." The memo concluded that all reservoirs with the exception of Garrison Dam would have their flood control pools "evacuated" before March 1.
But there were problems downstream. Tributaries to the Missouri were already flooding, and there were calls to hold back on releases from Gavins Point Dam near Yankton.
"I had many people in the lower basin calling up and asking us to reduce releases," Farhat said last week. "But we try to balance those upper basin and lower basin interests, always."
Managers of local segments felt concerns weren't heard Meanwhile, the snow continued to pile up in March. On the last day of the month, Farhat received an email from Corps headquarters in Washington. "As you know, the record snowfall in Montana has created an unusually high flood risk this spring," it said.
Many of the names of the emailers corresponding with Farhat were redacted in the documents supplied to the Argus Leader and Gannett.
On April 1, Farhat received a runoff forecast from an official whose name was redacted. It predicted a major runoff.
Farhat responded: "While I don't oppose what you've come up with as your runoff forecast, I do believe it's on the strong side considering what is actually out there in terms of plains snowpack."
Mountain snowpack, she added, is "nothing to write home about."
By April 4, with storage in the reservoirs on the rise, she bumped up releases on the dams by 10,000 cubic feet per second. That same day, she received an email from an operations manager, whose name was redacted. The manager wrote that the concerns of other managers weren't being addressed on monthly forecast calls. The official said that one outcome might be that managers "will not even bother to call in, or provide input, if they feel like they're not being heard."
The official also asked whether averaging is the best way to predict precipitation. Freakish rain would soon create further problems for the basin.
"It just seems to me that when we're in a drought cycle we overestimate the precip and when we're in a wet cycle we underestimate it," the official wrote.
Farhat last week said that local managers, who control smaller segments of the river, don't have a systemwide perspective.
"My answer to that is, we're looking at the entire basin, the whole 529,000 square miles, and we monitor the snowpack. We knew how much snow was there, in the mountains and on the plains, and we had accounted for that in our monthly study," she said. "Had that rain not fallen, the system would have easily been able to manage that snowpack. We've seen snowpack above that in other years."
In April and May, heavy rain put earlier strategy in perilBut by late April, it was clear the situation was deteriorating. Top officials in the Corps exchanged a flurry of emails about conditions in the Missouri basin. On April 17, Maj. Gen. Bo Temple sent an email from headquarters quoting an official with the National Weather Service: All the ingredients were in place for major flooding.
There also was a new problem: The Mississippi River was flooding.
Farhat's counterpart in that district emailed her to see if flows from the Missouri could be eased. Farhat responded that she wasn't sure they could legally ramp down flows as much as they wanted. The issue in the Missouri River basin was critical, Farhat wrote, and it might end up being "one of the wettest years on record."
Lay, the Missouri farmer, emailed Farhat on April 25 telling her she might want to ease up on letting water out. She responded that the Corps was "between a rock and a hard place on the Missouri River this year."
By May 19, "extensive and heavy rain" was moving throughout the district. More was expected, and snowpacks through the Rockies remained well above normal.
On May 21, an official wrote Farhat that there was a lot of water running in ditches in the area near the Garrison Dam. Should a planned increase of 2,000 cubic feet per second the next day be held back to give the area time to drain? Farhat responded: "Sure."
The Corps also was notified May 21 that 8 inches of rain had fallen over 48 hours in portions of Montana.
And the rain kept falling.
News about increased flow left dam manager dismayed
On May 24, Billings, Mont., got a record 3.12 inches. Officials scrambled to begin increasing releases at Garrison to 85,000 cubic feet per second while also searching for additional storage capacity in mountain reservoirs above the system.
Officials clearly were dejected.
Todd Lindquist, the operations manager for the Garrison Dam, emailed Farhat on May 25 that North Dakota officials wanted to know if releases would go to 85,000 cubic feet per second. Farhat emailed back that he was correct, and to call if he needed more information.
Lindquist responded: "I'm headed home. I no longer look people in the eye and tell them the forecast is 85,000 cfs from Garrison."
Farhat responded: "I understand. I quit answering my phone after our call at 1:00."
On May 23, Farhat sent an email to Col. Robert Tipton, the deputy division commander for the Corps' Northwest Division. "Sir," she wrote, "we are very concerned about conditions from Montana to Missouri. We need to increase releases throughout the system." She predicted that Pierre and Bismarck would need "advanced measures" to protect public infrastructure. "The situation here is critical," she concluded.
A Corps official emailed Farhat on May 26 that Fort Pierre wanted the Corps to begin lowering a South Dakota lake.
"Even if this does not have a major effect on the water surface in Pierre/Fort Pierre, public perception will be GREATLY POSITIVELY influenced if we do this," the official wrote. "My recommendation is that we DO this as soon as we can. With where we are going, anything that could help or even be perceived as helping needs to be accomplished."
The release volumes on the six dams also were moving up aggressively. By May 26, officials forecast releases of 100,000 cubic feet per second by mid-June and 110,000 cfs by early July - amounts well above previous records.
Officials also were working on models of potential release volumes from the dams. Farhat noted May 28 that "just adding one rainfall event like the one two weekends ago pushed the releases up to 150,000 (cubic feet per second)."
More rain came.
And later that day the Corps issued a news release stating that five of six dams would ramp up to 150,000 cubic feet per second of releases by mid-June. The Corps blamed the rain.
RELATED: Federal water managers were warned repeatedly early this spring by hydrologists and local officials that the reservoirs along the Missouri River were too high and could lead to flooding, according to a series of e-mails released publicly last week. ...
The buck stops with the corps Bismarck Tribune - Jul 24, 2011
The leadership of the US Army Corps of Engineers refuses to take responsibility for the agency's actions, or inactions, related to massive flooding on the Missouri River in May, June and now July. The corps, rather, puts responsibility on a "perfect ...
Excerpts of Corps of Engineers email traffic Sioux Falls Argus Leader - Jul 24, 2011
Here are some key points on the Missouri River flooding timeline, as reflected in the email traffic earlier this year of Jody Farhat, director of the water management division of the US Army Corps of Engineers' Omaha District. Jan. ...
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