Floodwaters that invaded cities along the Missouri River in March had receded or dried up. Now they are back and with more water projected to come down the river from the north, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and governors from Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Kansas met Wednesday in Council Bluffs to find ways to cut off more potential floodwaters from coming in.
"How we can work together, with regard to again, some of the short term solutions on plugging the holes in these levees to help protect people,” Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts told 6 News.
The governors wanted to find out how the Corps of Engineers is managing flooding on the Missouri River. The Corps increased flow from Gavin's Point dam by 10,000 cubic feet-per-second the past two days.
They announced, Wednesday, another increase to 75,000 feet-per-second will be issued on Saturday - that number is more than double the speed of an average year.
"There's a lot of water on the ground coming into the lower storage reservoirs. In order to manage those pools and not have to release a lot more later, we're releasing that now,” said John Remus, Chief of Missouri River Basin Water Management Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. "We recognize that there is flooding going on. We know that this is going to add a little bit to that."
Remus says four to six times the average amount of rainfall in South Dakota and northern Nebraska are the leading factor for the increases.
Homeowners along the river in Plattsmouth and Nebraska City are worried because gauges project several feet above flood stage
"We're concerned about the storage upstream and how that is going to be impacting us downstream,” Ricketts says. "Some areas that were previously inundated with floodwaters are going to be re-inundated."
Flooding will continue to be an issue until major levee breaches are fixed and rebuilt. "These waters come down and they carry away some of the materials that we are using to plug those holes so it is slowing down some of the work of these very important levees that we've got to get done,” Ricketts says.