Missouri River Drought Grinds On

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"The Missouri River, the nation's longest, is struggling in the dry clutches of a multiyear drought. For six years, the river's three giant reservoirs on the northern Plains have dropped slowly and alarmingly, curbing recreation, hydropower generation and commercial navigation downstream. While the drought's effects are not irreversible, river managers say it will take years for the waterway and its many users to recover. “We're kind of in uncharted territory here,” says Rose Hargrave, Missouri River program manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the river's six dams and the lakes behind them. “Reservoir levels have never been so low. The Plains snow pack is almost non-existent. It's not looking good.”

From its roaring headwaters in the Rocky Mountains to its slow, wide confluence with the Mississippi River, the Missouri is a 2,540-mile ribbon of frontier history, world-class fishing, billions of dollars of commerce and drinking water for millions. But years of sparse snowfall at the river's source have so reduced its flow that disruptions ripple all the way to the Mississippi.

When Fort Peck Lake here is full, it sprawls 134 miles across the prairie of northeastern Montana, drawing thousands of anglers in search of trophy walleye and other game fish. But now the USA's fifth-largest reservoir is a shrinking pool. Sixty-five years after it was created by a monster earthen dam across the Missouri, the lake level is 36 feet below average and could fall another 15 feet by this time next year. Downriver in North Dakota, 231-mile-long Lake Oahe, the nation's fourth-largest reservoir, is so low that it literally has left the state. From Bismarck to the South Dakota border, more than 60 miles have reverted to a narrow river where the lake was once up to 5 miles wide. Left behind are weedy mud flats and boat ramps stranded a mile or more from water.

The retreat of Fort Peck, Oahe and even bigger Lake Sakakawea in North Dakota is only the most obvious sign of distress. The water deficit also threatens farming and ranching, tourism, power production, shipping and the water supply for a 10-state basin. This year, “we may not be able to place a pump in the river,” says farmer Neal Turnbull of Brockton, Mont., whose 550 acres of grain crops are in jeopardy without irrigation."

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http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050429/1a_cover29.art.htm