By BRENT MARTIN

St. Joseph Post

Downstream Missouri River levee districts are asking the Army Corps of Engineers to greatly reduce water releases from Gavins Point Dam so they can drain backed-up floodwaters and take pressure off badly strained levees.

The Corps is dropping the releases from 75,000 cubic feet per second to 70,000.

Joel Euler with the Elwood-Gladden Drainage District in Doniphan County, Kansas tells Corps officials during a conference call that floodwaters need to be drained from behind downstream levees.

“So, we can service the 70,000 if we have some leeway, but right now at least two of these districts, the South St. Joseph Drainage and Levee District and the Elwood-Gladden District are out of room and we can’t pump down, we can’t pump the water,” Euler tells Corps officials during the conference call. “All we can do is maintain. We can’t get enough pumps from the Corps of Engineers and, to be candid, if we could get enough pumps we can’t afford to run them.”

The suggestion is getting a cool reception from the Corps, which says it has to maintain high releases from Gavins Point as snowmelt and additional rains enter the upper Missouri River basin.

Northwest Division Chief John Remus with the Missouri River Basin Water Management Office tells Euler there is more than 11 million acre feet of water stored in the flood control pools of the six reservoirs upstream on the Missouri River. Even though most of the snowmelt is gone, it and recent rains still poured 20,000 to 50,000 acre feet a day into the reservoir system the last several days.

“If we had zero inflow into the system, zero, none whatsoever, we would still have to release 35,000 cubic feet per second just to evacuate the water before next year’s runoff,” according to Remus. “A substantial reduction, in the order where you could probably drain, is just not going to be possible just based on that simple arithmetic alone.”

Euler counters something has to give or the levees will.

“But, at some point, we have to have a break. And, I’m not saying that you have to keep it low indefinitely. I’m saying that we don’t have the capability to mechanically pump this water and if we can let nature to do its work for a brief period then we’re ready to get back in the game,” Euler replies to Remus. “But, at some point, you have to hold more up there so we can get rid of some down here so we can participate. If not, all you’re doing is flooding everybody. So, nobody wins.”

Corps officials will only say they plan to speak with levee representatives.