News, Weather and Sports for Sioux City, IA: KCAU-TV.comCorps Gives Update on Gavins Point Dam Releases

Corps Gives Update on Gavins Point Dam Releases

The amount of water gushing out of Gavins Point Dam is already record breaking and with so much water being released in such a short amount of time, a reasonable question would be why wasn't water released earlier.

"They do use the rainfall, the precipitation on the ground and they do forecast. They look down into the crystal ball into the future, but they did not have any information that showed them in that point in time that they needed to start the releases earlier," said David Becker, operations project manager with the US Army Corps of Engineers.

By next week the releases will be at 130,000 cubic feet per second and by mid June, 150,000; a frightening number for those who have homes along the river.

But the corps cannot exactly predict the effects of the releases.

"I know all of the communities on the Missouri are being talked to by the corps. We're talking to the county emergency managers and every community by the river has some issues," said Becker.

A useful tool for people along the river is the corps' Flood Inundation Map, which shows what areas will be covered once the releases reach 150,000 cubic feet per second.

"That will be a tremendous advantage to people so they can see how high the waters going to get in their specific area," explained Becker. 

The record releases from Gavins Point Dam will remain for weeks, causing the flooding to continue.

This is not going to be a brief event, it's going to linger for a while so we expect that 150,000 for quite a while, maybe a month, six weeks," said Becker. 

Becker also added that the Missouri River will reach its highest level this year since they began keeping records about 113 years ago.

To see the flood map as well as other flood resources refer to this website

http://www.nwo.usace.army.mil/html/op-e/flood.html