# Could 2011 Missouri River flooding have been prevented?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-2011-missouri-river-flooding-have-been-prevented/587117>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [June 28, 2011, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-2011-missouri-river-flooding-have-been-prevented/587117 "2011-06-28T07:44:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![HighFructose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/87869e/32.png) [@HighFructose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HighFructose)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-2011-missouri-river-flooding-have-been-prevented/587117/1 "2011-06-28T07:44:08Z")

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This kind of flew under my radar, but now that there are nuclear power plant involved ([http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/us/21flood.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/us/21flood.html)), I’ve taken interest.

Apparently, the US Army Corps of Engineers is being blamed for mismanagement of water budgets in Montana/North Dakota for the flooding that has threatened nuclear power plants that in Nebraska that have been built along the Missouri River.

The local opinion would have one believe that the Corps has mismanaged the way flood control is supposed to work. Yet further research indicates that it would take an Act of Congress to change the way the the Upper Missouri River (Mississippi, depending on the technicalities of nomenclature) is managed. See [http://www.nwd-mr.usace.army.mil/rcc/reports/mmanual/MasterManual.pdf](http://www.nwd-mr.usace.army.mil/rcc/reports/mmanual/MasterManual.pdf).

This strikes me as another Katrina-like scenario: people with personal investment blaming the government for Corps for missteps, but management failures seem less evident to me than structural failures.

Can anyone explain what is going on, and if these claims of mismanagement are justified?

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**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\
**Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-2011-missouri-river-flooding-have-been-prevented/587117/2 "2023-06-23T18:41:32Z")

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Lawsuits over this have been going on for many years and now:

> **[US engineers contributed to Missouri River flood damage and must pay...](https://apnews.com/article/missouri-river-flooding-lawsuit-547b04d7ae4a5795ebd9a526f36b35e7)**
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> An appeals court has not only upheld a 2020 order for the federal government to pay landowners along the Missouri River for years of flooding, it's also requiring the government to cover crop losses and damages from the devastating floods of 2011.

Note:

> Land value loss alone for which the government was found liable was estimated to be around $10 million by lower courts. Attorneys for the landowners had estimated that total damages could exceed $300 million. Total damages across the Missouri River basin in 2011 were estimated at around $2 billion, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

This was by the The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, so only the Supreme Court could change the results.

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**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\
**Post date:** [June 23, 2023, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-2011-missouri-river-flooding-have-been-prevented/587117/3 "2023-06-23T19:04:20Z")

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Surely the Army Corps of Engineers could have stopped the heavy rain and snow in the Rocky Mountains that led to this flooding. “Hang them all”, I say.