Corps warning of low Missouri River levels as pipeline boondoggle doubles in price

Recall the fight over surplus water in the Missouri River basin when Marty Jackley blamed the US Army Corps of Engineers after the Oahe Dam dropped sediment that ultimately filled up some areas in South Dakota’s Moreau River. 

Hardly coincidentally, an Earth hating former governor of South Dakota who built a house in a swamp knowing Lake Sharpe was filling with silt sued the Corps after he was flooded out. 

Today, the Lewis and Clark Rural Water System exists because farmers have ruined their own wells and the Big Sioux River but South Dakota will flout Waters of the United States rulings until the cows come home unless or until downstream states cry foul.  

And speaking of poisoning your own aquifers Earth hating Republicans are begging for more federal money for a 165-mile, 71-inch pipeline from the Missouri River to Rapid City that will cost at least $4 billion then lift water nearly two thousand feet in elevation for lawns, Rally campgrounds and Ellsworth Air Force Base carving through Native America for white privilege instead of empowering communities to harvest snowmelt and rainwater while rural communities are dependent on politicians who exploit need.

The United States Army Corps of Engineers says April 2026 runoff in the Missouri River Basin above Sioux City, IA, was 51% of average– or 1.5 million acre-feet. John Remus, chief of the Corps’ Missouri River Basin Water Management Division, says dry conditions are present in 74% of the basin. He says drought conditions are expected to persist through July with some expansion likely in Montana and South Dakota. As a result, the runoff forecast was lowered by 0.7 MAF from last month. [Missouri River upper basin runoff forecast lowered due to dry conditions]

South Dakota receives zero dollars for hydropower generation but eminent domain forces transmission lines to be built so how is that in the state’s best interest? Silt deposits are the responsibility of the state so AG Jackley should sue the mining and ag industries for that runoff instead of blaming the Corps.

“'Ultimately a lawsuit was filed in 2003 [and] the federal court judge held for liability against the United States and held that they were the proximate cause of injury. That was back in 2022. As I sit here today, the United States still has not resolved that case. It has created major problems with the environment and other concerns. The United States held that trust lands that involved ranchers and native americans [sic] have no property interests. And equally so on range units – where you combine parcels of land – set up by the BIA. They ultimately determined that that also is not a property interest. So they put these ranchers in jeopardy of their farming operations by bad decision they’ve used the civil courts to drag out litigation,' said AG Jackley." [Jackley, Sullivan, Byfield speak in House lawfare roundtable]

With irony as a casuality US Senator Mike Rounds continues to push for legislative changes to the Corps' Master Manual to prioritize flood control over the threatened piping plover and endangered pallid sturgeon and demands better mitigation strategies for the Missouri River basin.