Flooding submerges parts of North Dakota city (Reuters)

MINOT, North Dakota (Reuters) – The swollen Souris River whose waters deluged North Dakota's fourth-largest city of Minot, was expected to crest early on Sunday, with storms threatening to complicate efforts to contain the biggest flood in area history.

Local and federal officials worked feverishly to reinforce levees, protect the city's key infrastructure and care for thousands of residents forced to flee their submerged homes.

By Saturday evening, the Souris, which flows from Canada southeast into North Dakota, was at least 3.5 feet above the 130-year-old record it shattered on Friday.

Under current conditions, the river is expected to crest by Sunday morning at 3.8 feet above that record, according to the National Weather Service.

"We will continue to be at this highest level for the next several days," said Minot Mayor Curt Zimbelman, adding that the possibility of rain could complicate containment efforts.

"There is a cluster of thunderstorms that are pretty close to Minot now. It looks like a couple of inches of rain could impact some of the areas with flooding," said Rich Thompson, a lead forecaster at the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center.

There have been no reported deaths or injuries.

"There is still a tremendous amount of water and even when this crest has passed, there will be months of a recovery effort," U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Jeffrey DeZellar said.

"When the water goes down it relieves pressure on emergency levees, but there has been so much damage done to the community that there is going to be a tremendous recovery effort," DeZellar said.

Authorities were also trying to stop a walking bridge that collapsed in the middle of the river from crashing into a downriver dam, a Minot Fire Department official said. The bridge had not moved as of Saturday evening.

Floodwaters have all but swallowed more than 3,000 Minot-area homes, according to North Dakota Department of Emergency Services spokeswoman Cecily Fong.

Officials' attention has turned to displaced residents, more than 12,000 of whom heeded mandatory evacuation calls.

Some moved in with friends or family, but more than 250 people were holed up in Red Cross shelters at a city auditorium and Minot State University or at the Minot Air Force Base.

More evacuees were expected from the towns of Turtle Lake, Velva and Sawyer, among others, according to Allan McGeough, executive director of the mid-Dakota chapter of the Red Cross.

In Sawyer, about 16 miles southeast of Minot, 400 residents were told to evacuate after river water rushed through a downtown roadway, and as many as 300 people in Velva will require shelter, McGeough said.

Flood warnings have been issued from Burlington, northwest of Minot, through Logan and Sawyer to the southeast.

The massive flooding in Minot has overshadowed temporarily the widening deluge along the Missouri River that threatens cities from Montana through Missouri.

Federal officials have pushed record water releases from six reservoirs along the Upper Missouri River that are near capacity because of a deep melting snowpack and heavy rains.

Those reservoirs have little capacity for additional rain, and record releases are expected to continue through August, causing widespread flooding in Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri.

Heavy rains across the Souris River Basin left Canadian reservoirs over capacity. Water rushing down from Canada has forced U.S. officials to make record-large releases from the Lake Darling Dam above Minot and other communities.

(Writing by Eric Johnson; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst)

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In South Dakota, some blame Corps for flood threat (AP)

FORT PIERRE, S.D. – Sitting atop a 6-foot wall of white sandbags hastily stacked to protect his home from the rising Missouri River, 82-year-old Helmet Reuer doesn't buy the official explanation that heavy rains caused a sudden flood threat.

Along with his neighbors in an upscale section of Fort Pierre, Reuer thinks the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blew it, waiting until too late to begin releasing water through the Missouri's six dams to give itself a cushion against potential flooding.

"It's human error," Reuer said as rising water neared his trim gray house.

Corps officials insist otherwise. They say they were in good shape to handle spring rain and melt from a massive Rocky Mountain snowpack until unexpectedly heavy rains of 8 inches or more fell last month in eastern Montana and Wyoming and western North Dakota and South Dakota.

"This is just a massive rain that fell in the exact wrong place at the exact wrong time," said Eric Stasch, operations manager at Oahe Dam, the huge structure that controls the Missouri's flow just above Fort Pierre and nearby Pierre, South Dakota's capital.

Crews have worked urgently all week to build up levee protections for the two cities, and say they expect to have 2 feet to spare. But Gov. Dennis Daugaard advised people in neighborhoods nearest the river to leave voluntarily in case levees don't hold, and hundreds have done so after a hectic week of moving possessions and adding sandbags around their houses.

They face weeks out of their homes until the river begins cresting in mid-June, with high water expected to linger for up to two months. The small town of Dakota Dunes, S.D., in the southeastern tip of the state, has also erected levees, as has Bismarck, N.D., though the situation is less serious there.

"I think they screwed up royally," former Gov. Mike Rounds said of the Corps, as he moved some possessions from the riverbank house he and his wife built and moved into after he left office in January. "I think they forgot their No. 1 mission, and that's flood protection."

People here were prepared for some higher flows, but many were startled when the Corps announced May 26 it needed to release water much faster than expected from the dams in Montana and the Dakotas.

Jody Farhat, chief of Missouri River Basin water management in the corps' Omaha District, said the agency made no mistakes and has managed releases in accordance with its manual. She said conditions on May 1 indicated peak releases at only a third of what they're now projected, and the reservoir system had full capacity to deal with flood control at the start of the runoff season. All that changed with the record rainfall in the upper basin and additional snow in the mountains, she said.

Farhat said heavy runoff from last year was released before the start of this year's runoff season, and discharges this spring were above normal even before the heavy rainfall upstream.

Corps officials declined a request for a one-one-one interview and provided some information by email, but in a teleconference Thursday, Farhat said the reservoirs had reached the desired levels before snowmelt was to begin.

"And what happened was we had this incredible rainfall event," Farhat said. "That was a rainfall event in May, and that was the game-changer in terms of system operations."

People who live in the flood-threatened areas say this wasn't supposed to happen.

The Missouri River dams were built to control periodic spring flooding and provide hydropower, irrigation and other benefits after Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1944. Fort Peck Dam, in northeastern Montana, was already operating in 1940 and Oahe, a massive reservoir that runs from North Dakota to the dam near Pierre in central South Dakota, was completed in 1962. Big Bend, about 60 miles downstream from Oahe, was the last dam finished, in 1964.

This is not the first fight over Missouri River water management, but the dispute has more often been about too little water. A series of lawsuits was filed during a prolonged drought that started about a decade ago. Upstream states wanted more water left in the reservoirs to support a growing sport fishing industry, while states downstream wanted more water to support barge traffic on the free-flowing stretch from Sioux City, Iowa, to St. Louis.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider the legal fight in 2006, leaving intact a federal appeals court ruling that said navigation trumps upstream recreation and other interests when the Corps of Engineers manages the river.

In Montana, officials in downstream communities said some people faulted the Corps for not releasing water earlier from Fort Peck Dam, the first in the series of water-control structures on the river.

But Roosevelt County Commissioner Gary MacDonald said he was reluctant to blame the federal agency.

"That's the sentiment here of why did they wait," MacDonald said. "There's no better person for the average John Doe to blame out there than the Corps. They're taking the brunt of it because they're controlling the flow."

Back in South Dakota, Daugaard also declined to criticize the Corps, saying he had seen "no evidence that they're working other than in good faith" to deal with the situation.

At Oahe Dam, the quickening pace of the water releases through rarely used gates — more than 100,000 cubic feet per second and building — makes for a foaming, thundering spray that brought spectators by the carload before it was closed for safety reasons. But many here have no time to appreciate the river's power.

"I'm tired and I'm sick," Mike Richardson said as he loaded household items into a trailer to move them from his Fort Pierre house to higher ground. "I'm better off than a lot of people, I know, but I still can't help but feel sorry for myself. ... Somebody really dropped the ball on this deal."

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South Dakota levees tested as Missouri River waters rise (Reuters)

By James B. Kelleher James B. Kelleher – 1 hr 13 mins ago

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Levees hastily erected along the Missouri River in central South Dakota were holding on Sunday as flooding caused by heavy spring rains and a melting winter snowpack continued to raise the waters toward record levels, officials said.

But the pressure on the earthen berms in Pierre and Fort Pierre, and the anxiety of area residents, will continue to increase through Tuesday, when the water being released at a dam just above the two towns reaches its peak of 150,000 cubic feet (4,247.5 cubic meters) per second -- nearly double the 85,000 cubic feet per second being released last week.

Officials have not yet ordered mandatory evacuations in the state. But as many as 3,000 Pierre and Fort Pierre residents, and more than 800 of the 1,100 homes over 250 miles away in Dakota Dunes, are threatened.

So far, the releases from the Oahe Dam have raised water levels along the Missouri in the state more than a foot.

"All the levees are holding at this hour," said Nathan Sanderson, spokesman for the Southeast Incident Management Team, which is warily watching the creeping floodwaters in Dakota Dunes in the extreme southeastern part of the state.

Sanderson said the evacuations there continued to be voluntary but added that officials were "encouraging people to leave."

Police have tried to reassure wary residents that their homes will be watched and access to their neighborhoods controlled.

"We know citizens are extremely worried during this time," said Union County Sheriff Dan Limoge.

"We hope to ease some of their concerns by assuring them that their homes will be vigilantly watched around the clock until this situation has passed."

RECORD SNOW, RAIN

Record snowfall at the Missouri's headwaters this winter and record rainfall this spring have swollen the Mississippi tributary and pushed the dams and reservoirs along it that are designed to control the usual seasonal surge this time of year to their limit.

So to protect them, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been slowly opening up the dams and reservoirs upstream, gradually lifting river water levels downstream from North Dakota and South Dakota,

The U.S. Coast Guard has closed a more than 180-mile (290-kilometer) stretch of the river from near Sioux City, Iowa, south due to high water.

Farther downstream, the river is beginning to swell beyond its banks in Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri and officials braced for evacuations and built levees. The maximum planned release rates could push the river up to seven feet above flood stage at Sioux City, Omaha and Kansas City.

The result is a creeping problem expected to continue into July, adding to an already record season of flooding in the Midwest, where the rising waters of the Mississippi River caused forced evacuations and intentional inundation of thousands of acres in April and May.

The Missouri is expected to continue to rise rapidly in Pierre until Tuesday, when controlled releases from the Oahe reach maximum levels -- where they may hold for weeks.

In Montana, the Corps has increased water flows from Fort Peck Dam and widespread flooding of tributaries has forced hundreds of evacuations and inundated several smaller cities.

The Missouri River basin forms the northwest section of the Mississippi River system that stretches from the Rockies to western New York in the north and funnels water down through Louisiana to the Gulf of Mexico.

(Additional reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis; Editing by Jerry Norton)

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