| The Missouri River appears alarmingly low but thanks to timely rainfall
and the easing of demand, water levels on both the Missouri and
Yellowstone have returned to nearly normal levels.
John Daggett, the Project Engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
at Fort Peck Dam, reported Wednesday that the Missouri River flow beyond
the dam is at 4,000 cubic feet per second and 3,800 cubic feet of water is
coming into the reservoir.
Daggett said, "The flow ran at around 6,000 cubic feet all summer.
We really need some snow this winter particularly in the mountains."
The manager of the MDU Lewis and Clark Station, Craig Herbert, says the
Yellowstone is running at about the same level as the Missouri. He said,
"The rains helped and now with irrigation tapering off the water
level has come up. It's a little below normal. At the end of August and
beginning of September, the Yellowstone River was at its low flow of 970
cubic feet per second. U.S. Geological Survey records show a three-day
period in 1961 when the river flow was 500 to 550 cubic feet a
second." Construction of the Yellowtail Dam has since regulated the
flow of the Yellowstone.
Jerry Nypen, manager of the Lower Yellowstone Irrigation Project, said,
"It was nip-and-tuck the whole month of August. All of our headgates
were wide open. In August we were taking about 50 percent of the
river."
Measurements were 1,200 cubic feet per second in the main canal and
1,200 cfs in the river. Users downstream between Intake and the MDU plant
accounted for the lower measurements at the Lewis and Clark station
southeast of Sidney.
As it turned out, the LYIP met all the demands and the system ran very
efficiently. Much of the credit belongs to LYIP Water Manager Don
Mastvelten and water users on the system. Nypen said, "We had a lot
of cooperation and water users exercised excellent on-farm water
management practices."
The irrigation system will be shut down Sept 27. The waterflow through
the irrigation canal will gradually taper off until there is zero water
availability by Oct. 3. |