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Colorado Water Management Monthly News Release
July 8, 2008
OMAHA
– The combination of a normal mountain snowpack followed by rain
over much of the upper basin and flood-producing rain in the lower
basin has raised levels in the big Missouri River reservoirs 9 to 12
feet since April 1.
“The heavy rain in June pushed the Missouri
River over flood stage in a 600-mile reach of the lower river,” said
Larry Cieslik, Chief of the Water Management office here. “Releases
from the reservoirs have been drastically reduced to help lower
river stages downstream.” These releases averaged a record low
12,000 cfs in June, half the normal 25,000 cfs. The previous low
was 16,700 cfs in 1984.
Runoff for 2008 is forecast to total 25 million
acre feet (MAF), an increase of 3.8 MAF from last month’s forecast.
The storage in the reservoirs was 44 MAF on the first of the month,
5.4 MAF more than a month ago and 3.8 MAF higher than last year at
this time.
Because reservoir storage remains lower than
normal, only minimum service flows will be provided this year for
navigation and other downstream uses. Based on the storage on July
1, the commercial navigation season will be shortened by 30 days.
The last day of navigation flow support will be Oct. 31 at the mouth
of the river; just north of St. Louis. The normal navigation season
runs from April 1 through Nov. 30.
Last year, the average release from the system of
reservoirs set an all-time record low due to drought conservation
measures and high downstream tributary inflow. Corps officials
expect that releases will continue to be much-below average this
year as efforts continue to help reduce downstream flooding and
conserve water during this extended drought.
View full-text news release here.
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