Water levels along the flooded Missouri River should start dropping a little faster by Friday. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will start cutting its releases of water from Gavins Point Dam, near Yankton, South Dakota, by 5,000 cubic feet per second (CFS) each day.
Those daily reductions will run through the end of the month. It’ll drop the releases from a peak of 160,000 CFS at the flood’s crest two months ago. That translated to about a million gallons per second.
The Corps wants to cut releases slowly so fragile levees don’t collapse. By September, the rate should be 90,000 CFS. Daily cuts will start again in mid-September and should be down to 40,000 CFS by October and down to 20-thousand by December