May 22, 2012

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Corps predicts Missouri River flows to be below normal for 2012

May 22, 2012 By

Flooding Missouri River at Sioux City in June of 2011

After record run-off and flooding on the Missouri River last year, it appears river flows this year will be below-normal.

Jody Farhat is chief of the Missouri River Basin Water Management Office for the U-S Army Corps of Engineers in Omaha.

Farhat says their predictions will be welcome news to those who had flood damage last year.

“Our run-off forecast for the 2012 calendar year above Sioux City, Iowa, is 21.6-million acre feet which is 87% of normal,” Farhat says. “This is based on the lack of Plains snowpack, the lower-than-average mountain snowpack and the unusually warm and dry conditions we’ve had so far this year.”

Farhat says the Corps will be able to maintain normal flows on the river until at least July first.

“We’re currently providing full-service navigation flow support,” she says. “If the total system storage falls below 57-million acre feet on July first, flow support will be reduced for the second half of the navigation season.”

Farhat says some normal signs of life are also returning to the river, including two types of endangered birds.

“To date, 51 piping plover nests have been located, with the highest number of nests on Lewis & Clark Lake and on the river reach below Gavins Point Dam,” she says. “Very few nests have been found on the new habitat that was created below Gavins Point Dam due to last year’s flood. The first interior least tern was spotted in the basin this week but no least tern nests have been found.”

Last year’s flooding of the Missouri River in eastern Nebraska, western Iowa and northwest Missouri caused hundreds of millions of dollars damage to homes, businesses, farmland and infrastructure. The high water lasted months.

Filed Under: Accidents & Disasters, Agriculture, Environment & Conservation, Featured Stories, Military, News, Recreation & Entertainment, Transportation, Weather

Missouri River ranks among nation’s “most endangered” after 2011 flood

May 15, 2012 By

Missouri River flooding north of Omaha/Council Bluffs in 2011

The Missouri River is #4 on the new list of the country’s “most endangered” waterways, according to an environmental conservation group.

Eileen Fretz, spokeswoman for American Rivers, says last year’s historic, months-long flooding of the Missouri showed how management of the river is at a crossroads.

Fretz says, “We can either keep going on levees and dams that have failed to provide adequate flood protection, as they did last year, or we can take a broader look and look at some other changes, such as the natural ability of the river’s floodplains and wetlands to absorb and store floodwaters.”

The 2011 flooding caused hundreds of millions of dollars damage to homes, businesses, farmland and infrastructure. Many blamed the U-S Army Corps of Engineers for not acting quickly enough to avert the flooding, but Fretz says there needs to be more long-term planning to prevent future flooding disasters.

“Just relying on dams and levees hasn’t been enough to protect us and we need to acknowledge that flooding happens and we need to accommodate for a little bit of that,” Fretz says. “We think that flood plain restoration can help us meet those needs.”

She encourages Nebraskans and Iowans to take action by going to the Washington D-C-based group’s website, www.americanrivers.org.

“There’ll be a link where you can send an email to decision makers,” Fretz says, “encouraging them to support their rivers.”

The nation’s top three most endangered rivers, according to the report, are: the Potomac, the Green River and the Chattahoochee.

American Rivers calls itself “the nation’s voice for clean water and healthy rivers,” and releases the report every year to shine a public spotlight on threats facing rivers and how citizens can take action to help.

Filed Under: Accidents & Disasters, Agriculture, Military, News, Weather

Large “void” found during inspection of key Missouri River dam

May 10, 2012 By

Gavins Point Dam near Yankton, SD

The Missouri River fell nearly eight feet on Wednesday as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers shut off the flow from Gavins Point Dam near Yankton to inspect the concrete slabs below the spillway gates.

Three teams used sophisticated radar to survey for damage. Dave Becker, the Corps’ operations manager for the dam, says they’ve seen warning signs develop since last year’s historic flooding across Iowa and Nebraska.

“We have a foot and a half of concrete on top and that is on top of a four-foot gravel layer,” Becker says. “Ever since January, we’ve had concerns about that gravel layer. We had a couple of gates open, gates 2 and 3 at this south end, and we saw water coming out of the drain at the north end and we said, ‘That’s not right.’”

Becker says the record flows that brought the prolonged, record flooding last summer caused damage under the concrete.

He says, “What we found was that some of the drain grates had been washed off during the flood and some of that water was going straight down the drain holes and into the gravel layer and eroding some of that gravel.”

He says the concrete is all fine but there’s at least one large “void” in the gravel. Becker says crews used the low water level on Wednesday to get a closer peek at the problem areas.

“The ground-penetrating radar takes a look at the concrete and the gravel area underneath to see what condition it’s in and to see if there are any voids,” he says. “They also drilled holes in the concrete so they can visually just take a look down there and see what they got, they can stick a piece of rebar down there, feel around, see what they got.”

Becker says there are no structural issues with the spillway and they are not worried about any leaking.

He says they hope to get the spillway repaired before next spring. Flows on the river were restored about midnight and the river’s level today is back to normal.

By Jerry Oster, WNAX, Yankton

Filed Under: Accidents & Disasters, Environment & Conservation, Featured Stories, Military, News, Weather

Cong. Smith: Military may be subject to spending cuts

May 8, 2012 By

Cong. Adrian Smith

If Congress can’t reach an agreement on spending soon, an automatic process called “sequestration” will start on January first.

It’s a holdover from the failed “supercommittee” process of last winter. That bi-partisan group couldn’t agree on cuts needed to reduce the federal deficit.

Nebraska Congressman Adrian Smith says at least the tone of the debate has changed — from how much to spend to how much to cut.

“We’re working and doing the right thing to make sure cuts are in the right place,” Smith says. “There is some bipartisan concern that some of these changes would undermine the security of our country with the military. We can always look for a better way, a more efficient way of spending dollars, even in the military.”

Smith says he doesn’t agree that defense cuts should be off the table completely.

“I don’t want to be that arbitrary about it,” Smith says. “We need to be very careful in how we move forward. There is bipartisan concern that some of these cuts would undermine the security of our country, and that’s what I don’t want to do, but at the same time, I think we need to look for ways to prevent spending hundreds of dollars on hammers.”

The other part of the spending equation is the so-called Bush tax cuts, which will expire at the end of the year without action. Smith says it would be a big financial shock if they are not extended, sparking the largest tax increase in American history.

He says we need to take a look at the “economic consequences” of such a move.

By Jerry Oster, WNAX, Yankton

Filed Under: Legislature & Government, Military, News

Gavins Point spigots to be shut off for radar imaging of flood damage

May 8, 2012 By

Gavins Point Dam

Damage assessments using a special type of radar will be conducted this week on a key Missouri River dam following last year’s record flooding. The U-S Army Corps of Engineers is focusing on the spillway slabs at Gavins Point Dam.

John Remus, chief of the Omaha District Hydrologic Engineering Branch, says the teams will take a close look at material under the concrete slabs.

“Some of the frost blanket, which is a granular material, has been removed from under the slabs,” Remus says. “We don’t know how much has been removed and the extent of that depth-wise, so we’ll bring in some ground-penetrating radar. There’s going to be three crews, working their way across the slab to quantify the extent of this damage.”

The investigation will start Wednesday at 8 AM and releases from the dam will need to be reduced to nothing for about eight hours to drain the uppermost portion of the spillway. Remus says stopping the water flow will give them a good look at the entire slab below the spillway gates.

“We do believe so, based on what we saw this last Tuesday when we drew it down to 12,000 CFS (cubic feet per second),” he says. “The drains have responded quite quickly. We also saw that during the flood when we drew down the discharges from the spillway. We’re confident we can get the information we need to get in the eight hours that we have scheduled for this.”

Stage reductions at Yankton, Sioux City and Omaha are expected to last for about 12 hours, 24 hours and 48 hours, respectively. Missouri River stages below Omaha will be impacted, too, but to a lesser degree.

Once the extent of the damage is known, the Corps can develop a repair plan which should be implemented by summer. The goal is to have repairs finished by spring of 2013.

By Jerry Oster, WNAX, Yankton

Filed Under: Accidents & Disasters, Military, News, Weather
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