The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has begun releasing water from Perry, Tuttle Creek and Milford lakes.
Water from the multi-purpose pools of the lakes is being released to support navigation on the Missouri River.
The last time this was done was in November 2009, the Corps said.
Comments
riverdrifter 10 months, 1 week ago
Pure foolishness in this time of drought.
belexus73 10 months, 1 week ago
Releasing our precious water for the phantom barges on the river. Ridiculous.
mikekt 10 months, 1 week ago
This is mindless unless these flood control lakes are seriously overfilled. That is the potential water supply for many cities along the Kansas & the Lower Missouri Rivers if this drought becomes long standing.
Whatever floats your boat?
What are they shipping? Drought created grain?..... Right!
How about, whatever runs your town, that you can drink, runs your shower, washes your clothing & dishes, or.....flushes your toilet.
Am not sure that i trust their judgement?! Isn't this the same organization that overfilled the flood control lakes up north, several years back, that lead to major Missouri River Flooding last year for lack of northern storage space?!
hujiko 10 months, 1 week ago
This will cause little to no noticeable rise in the Missouri River, and will only exacerbate the situation in Kansas should this drought continue. Great.
riverdrifter 10 months, 1 week ago
Are you a hydrologist? Anyway, combined with all the other releases from other lakes it does make a difference. The Corps of Engineers has always had this weird, one-way, symbiotic relationship with the barge industry -which tells it what to do with the water. Also, all those downstream states have politicians wanting that water. Kansas can keep that water -for a price.
hujiko 10 months, 1 week ago
I'm actually a geographer, but it doesn't take a hydrologist to realize that under drought conditions our reservoirs will be hard pressed to keep up the normal pool if we release water simply for barge traffic. The other lakes you are speaking of are several orders of magnitude larger than the combined Perry, Tuttle, Milford volume being released. There really is no comparing three reservoirs along 7th order streams to those on the main branch of a 9th order stream.
To put this into perspective, at multipurpose pool - Perry ~12,000 acres -Tuttle ~12,000 acres - Milford ~16,000 acres, while the three largest reservoirs along the Missouri - Fort Peck ~18,500,000 acres - Oahe ~23,500,000 acres, -Sakakawea ~23,800,000 acres. That's ~65,000,000/ 40,000 = ~1,600 times smaller.
riverdrifter 10 months, 1 week ago
These lakes will not be kept at what you call "normal" pool. They will be drained to a minimum pool as determinded by the COE and as gaged by the USGS. Then, the gate releases will be reduced to the minimum to keep the streams flowing. I agree with you, though: I despise it.
hujiko 10 months, 1 week ago
I should clarify, I have used surface area as a measure of volume and realize my mistake.
However, Ft Peck has a water volume of roughly 23 cubic kilometers, while both Sakakawea & Oahe have ~29 cubic km. Tuttle Creek is the only reservoir with volume listed, at .41 cubic km, so I can infer Perry would be about the same while Milford would be a bit larger. A conservative guess would be something like 2 cubic km combined. Even if when together they totaled 5 cubic km, that's still ~80/ 5=16 times less volume.
No comparison, still.
riverdrifter 10 months, 1 week ago
They measure lake capactiy in in acre-feet and discharge in cubic feet per second.
riverdrifter 10 months, 1 week ago
"it doesn't take a hydrologist to realize that under drought conditions our reservoirs will be hard pressed to keep up the normal pool if we release water simply for barge traffic." That's not the point. The lakes will be drained to their individual minimum pool levels not their "normal" levels. As in Perry's is 891.40. They may take it to six feet below that, IDK. When it hits their determined minimum, they'll shut the gates to a minimum discharge. The lakes will not be run dry. Anyway, I agree: it's disgusting -and a seemingly PR disaster for the COE, 'cept they've seen it before and they know how to deal with it.
hujiko 10 months, 1 week ago
I'm not arguing with you, as I think we are in fair agreement. I would just hate to see unintended consequences from these actions. As I'm sure you know, lowering a lake can interrupt local base flow and upset marginal ecosystems, and if continued through drought can cause municipal intakes to rise above the pool. I know the lakes will not run dry, but they don't have to in order to cause major problems.
Here's to rain!
mikekt 10 months, 1 week ago
Agreed..... that other reservoirs are bigger than ours & should be hit first if it helps to keep The Corps from having to flood Parkville Mo., annually, to further the recreation industry up north & a few barges to the south for cheeper export costs.
I'm not concerned about the big lakes to the north going dry but am concerned about the Lawrence River Water Intake on the Kansas River, if our reservoirs & river should dry up, due to an extended drought, as they have over the last several years in other parts of this country.
Am aware that Lawrence also gets "some" of it's water from Clinton Lake.... but you never miss your water till it's gone south..... for the questionable ends of recreational uses up north & barge traffic to send grain to the "Big Easy" to be shipped elsewhere during some version of a weather related agricultural disaster, that appears to be settling into the midwest.
We feed the world...our farmers do! And this is not just us that's going to feel this.
Once they get around to upping the drain on the northern lakes for barge traffic, that water won't be flowing west, ( up hill ) from KC to.... Lawrence, Topeka, Manhattan, etc.., if we are way short on water due to an extended drought in Kansas.
By the way, all but one station in Lawrence sell E-10; i.e., gasoline cut with Ethanol buy 10%. Ethanol that comes from corn, that is drought stressed-out this year! As in a failing crop!
Lots of food products use corn in them, also.
Supply & demand,..anyone.?
Cant_have_it_both_ways 10 months, 1 week ago
Should have made them sell KU liscense plates for the water. Lets see how bad they want the water! :)
mikekt 10 months, 1 week ago
Here! Here!
srj 10 months, 1 week ago
The Kansas river is as low as I have ever seen it.
riverdrifter 10 months, 1 week ago
You must be new around here!
Joe Hyde 10 months, 1 week ago
According to the numbers posted on the KC District's 3-day Lake Forecast site (public information available online) MIlford, Tuttle Creek and Perry lakes all three presently have a surplus of water -- each lake standing about one foot above multi-purpose pool.
This modest excess means the Corps does have a bit of wiggle room in terms of contributing water to authorized recipients located downstream outside Kansas.
mikekt 10 months, 1 week ago
Hope that they know what they are doing in the long run, because water won't flow up hill from the Missouri River at KC, into the Kansas River to Lawrence, Topeka, Manhattan, etc., if this becomes an extended multi-year drought event, as we have seen elsewhere lately.
This would have made more sense, to me, if the Corps. had said that they were trying to keep hydroelectric power generation in Lawrence alive & well ( at some level ) or trying to support adequate river depths to keep water utilities water intakes under water or unsilted.
But for Mo. River Barges at a time when agricultural production is noticeably down to send grain out of the country? Hummmmm?
They should definitely consider cutting the flow back to some level of reasonable flow to support Kansas Interests when these pools reach normal multi-purpose pool levels at our Kansas reservoirs.
Can they even release water, once these pools drop below X level of pool height?
As an opinion, one foot of water over the multipurpose pool heights here, doesn't sound like a huge surplus of water to me ( Water which could simply evaporate with the heat, all by itself into clouds ) during a potential period of intense multi-year drought.
Commenting has been disabled for this item.