The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers shouldn’t be blamed for causing major flooding along the Missouri River that has affected five states regularly since 2006, the government says in its initial response to a lawsuit.
More than 200 landowners claimed in a March lawsuit that they should be compensated for the extensive damage they experienced — particularly during the extended 2011 flooding that devastated hundreds of thousands of acres of mostly farmland in South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.
In managing the Missouri River’s reservoirs, Corps officials balance flood control and other potential uses of the river, including barge traffic, hydropower, recreation and providing habitat for fish and wildlife.
The landowners say the government is putting less emphasis on flood control because of efforts to restore habitat for endangered species.
Government lawyers deny that in a 56-page response filed June 19. They argue that authorities never promised to stop all flooding on the Missouri River and that providing habitat for endangered species didn’t exacerbate flooding.
“The system does not guarantee a flood-free zone in the Missouri River reaches between the system reservoirs and below the system,” the government’s lawyers wrote.
The landowners argued that the Missouri River flooding improperly deprived them of their land, so they should be compensated because the government improperly took it.
The 2011 flooding lasted more than three months after the Corps began releasing massive amounts of water from reservoirs upstream that were filled by melted snow and heavy rains.
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