Thousands of South Dakota and North Dakota residents have voluntarily left homes in communities protected by hastily built sandbag barriers and levees ahead of peak releases. The Missouri River forms the northwest portion of the Mississippi River basin that stretches from Montana to western New York and funnels water south into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Corps said the Garrison Dam reservoir above Bismarck, North Dakota, had capacity to handle the additional releases from Fort Peck and has left intact its planned maximum releases at 150,000 cubic feet per second from the other five dams. The Montana rains forced fresh evacuations due to overflows on tributaries, including in Nashua downstream of Fort Peck, and in flood-battered Roundup on the Musselshell River. Up to five inches of rain fell in parts of Montana from Monday through Wednesday, forcing the Corps to increase planned releases to 60,000 cubic feet per second at Fort Peck and warn that the rate could be increased from there.

It runs freely below Gavins Point the more than 800 miles to the Mississippi River, making that dam a focus for people along the Lower Missouri.Īll of the dams are planned to reach maximum release rates by about mid June and hold them through at least mid August. The river has six dams from Fort Peck in Montana to Gavins Point on the South Dakota-Nebraska border. Jail inmates and volunteers were placing sandbags around Ameristar Casino Hotel in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Thursday and the parking lot of the former riverboat casino across the Missouri River from Omaha was flooded. The Corps does not expect the levee repairs to withstand the full weight of the Missouri and contractors are racing to raise a secondary levee to protect Hamburg by June 14, when peak water releases are planned from Gavins Point.įrom Montana through Missouri residents have been shoring up levees along the Missouri River ahead of planned record water releases from its six major dams to relieve pressure on reservoirs swollen by heavy rains and melting snow. That is near where sandbags were dropped by helicopter to patch a partial levee breach Sunday that threatens the town of Hamburg, Iowa.

Army Corps of Engineers added to planned water releases from the Fort Peck Dam in Montana for a second consecutive day due to hard rains.Ībout 260 miles of the Missouri have been closed to boaters from Gavins Point Dam south to where the borders of Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri meet.

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