Comical piece of BULLPUCKEY in many ways.....The Dams original mission is/was electrical generation, flood control, river transport-- and recreation has taken a big economic step in the last few years...Fort Peck Reservoir has been almost droughted out for years....Downstream Mississippi River barge folks have even filed suit for "their share" of the water rights when they tried to hold it back for electrical generation and recreation- and won...

From the Fort Peck website:

BUT-- you- and the author apparently haven't been on the Missouri drainage to see the water that has came here... We had record snowfall on the Milk River drainage (110+ inchs)- and record snowfall in the mountains which created one record setting flood starting in April  - followed by record rainfall for the spring (we have received almost 16 inches in the first 6 months in an area that averages 11 inches for the entire year) which created another Milk River/Montana drainage record flood of even greater proportions in June....Without the incredible rainfall- much of the downstream flooding would not have occurred...

The Milk- and Musselshell (both major contributaries to the Missouri) have had record flooding-- that flooded out hundreds of people-- and thousands of acres of cropland...

Soap-- How do you blame that on the Corps or the current or past politicians?

I know the folks downstream want to blame all their flooding on someone-- and like all good politicians or folks wanting to make political hay- some will- and all want to blame it to the political party they oppose--- but nobody (unless you are God) knew of the record rainfall that was going to come.....!!!!! Or what that would create.....

That Missouri Senator should be hung out to dry--because that is one of the states that sued the upstream states to make sure they had there water rights available for "navigation" to maintain their barge traffic... :roll:

If these Dams had been drained down to handle all the water we got- and then it didn't come everyone would scream because of NO electrical generation, irrigation, barge traffic, recreation and tourist economy, etc. etc...

Damed if you Do- and Damned if you Don't-- but some politician will certainly make hay/horsesh*t out of it....

We got hit again last night with .7 at the north place...4 Wheel drive time and water standing in the corrals with the creeks running bank full...

Taken from my deck looking north:

This is what some of these thousand of acres of top hay/crop land look like after 3 months of flood..

This was several 100 acres of the top Pioneer seed alfalfa in the whole country:

Another neighbors top producing alfalfa fields:

I have to agree with one thing the author seems to imply-- there needs to be a lot more dam/waterway infrastructure built to handle the flooding needs of some, so it can go to the areas totally lacking in water... I watched a show on TV the other day that showed that some major areas of the US-- Vegas/California/etc are running out of water-- and they suggested why some of the continual flood waters of the midwest couldn't be Dammed off- and then funneled/piped to those major growing metropolitan areas running out of water?

Sounds to me like a great undertaking--be a way to put a lot of the unemployed folks to work like the original building of these dams was in the 30's-- but it would take another Hoover/Roosevelt long term progressive thinking probably to do it.....And right now- with the partisan bickering none of that will happen...