Corps Says No Benefit to More Storage

Retha Colclasure | 4/13/2012

The US Army Corps of Engineers has said that record rainfall was to blame for historic flooding along the Missouri River in 2011. During the flooding, the dams north of Sioux City, Iowa held nearly 73-million acre feet of water. That was with record releases from all six reservoirs in the Missouri River Basin system.

So would extra flood control capacity have helped prevent flooding? The Corps says not really.

They released an analysis of how additional flood control storage would have reduced the risk of flooding during runoff events like what happened last year. They say there would have been no significant increase in the average annual flood benefits for any of the six possibilities they studied.

The Corps also points out that increasing flood control capacity would have negative impacts on other uses of the dams, like generating hydroelectricity and providing recreation.

COMMENT ON THIS STORY