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Mar 31, 2009 12:58 pm US/Central
Corps Increases Flow From Lake Traverse
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) ―
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WCCO-TV meteorologist Mike Augustyniak took photos of the flooded Red River Valley in the Fargo-Moorhead area on Saturday, March 28, 2009.
CBS
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has increased water flow from a Minnesota dam to make additional storage room in the Lake Traverse reservoir, which feeds into the flood-swollen Red River.
The water eventually will pass through Fargo, N.D., but the releases are being timed to manage water flow and avoid hurting the emergency levees protecting the city from flooding, Mark Davidson, a spokesman for the corps' St. Paul, Minn., division, said Tuesday.
Water released from the Lake Traverse reservoir takes about seven days to get to Fargo, the corps said.
"We're evaluating the gauges on an hourly basis," Davidson said.
Recent snow forecasts for the Lake Traverse area prompted the corps to begin increasing water flow out of the White Rock Dam near Wheaton, Minn., by 600 cubic feet per second at noon Sunday. The corps said it bumped the flow by the same amount every six hours until the total increase reached 2,400 cfs.
Corps hydrologists were talking with the National Weather Service on Tuesday to determine whether an additional release should be done on Wednesday morning, Davidson said.
Lake Traverse, which abuts western Minnesota, northeastern South Dakota and southeastern North Dakota, feeds north into the Bois De Sioux River, a tributary that feeds into the Red River.
The corps' Lake Traverse Project is comprised of two dams, two lakes and the Browns Valley dike at the lower end of the area.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can provide assistance to communities to save human life, prevent immediate human suffering or mitigate public property damage when an imminent threat of unusual flooding exists and a state requests assistance. Both North Dakota and Minnesota requested assistance from the corps.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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Slideshow: Flooding In Red River Valley
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