South Dakota Public Broadcasting

Teachers Study Causes and Impacts of 2011 Missouri River Flood

Dakota Digest - 07/25/2011

By Jenifer Jones

For those of us born within the past sixty years or so, it's sometimes easy to forget that the Missouri River wasn't always like it is today. But a class through the Missouri River Institute at USD is reminding K-12 teachers of all of the changes the river has gone through, and how its past is affecting the present flood.

It is suffocatingly hot outside. Students studying the science, culture and history of the Missouri River are hiking to the top of the Mulberry Bend overlook, near the Vermillion/ Newcastle bridge. It's basically a walk up a hill on a well kept paved path. Trees wave in the wind and black eyed susans dot the hillside. But in this heat, it feels like a strenuous hike. The prize is at the top of the hill, when onlookers are rewarded with an incredible view. From this vantage point, the river doesn't look like the one South Dakotans have been fighting all summer. It doesn't look like the same river that people have called angry and unpredictable. It looks pretty. Tim Cowman is the course instructor. He says this stretch is part of the Missouri River National Recreation River and still retains a lot of its natural qualities. This year that means the river is wide, reconnecting with its floodplain.

"You'll see where it's gone out over some of the farm ground and some of the low lying trees and so on out there," Cowman says. "The same thing is happening there. That's a very good characteristic of a natural river like this to allow flood waters to spread out onto its flood plane. And that helps absorb the energy of the flood and make less of an impact all on one area."

But most of the river doesn't have that option. Just a bit downstream, after Ponca State Park the river is channelized. Cowman says that's causing problems.

"We've put it in that straight jacket, trapped it, and when it eventually does break out it's got an awful lot of power and an awful lot of damage that it does," Cowman says.

This is just one of the issues Cowman wants students in the weeklong summer course thinking about. He says ever since channelization and construction of the dams began the ecosystem and flow of the river have been significantly altered. He says he's trying to educate people about the problems caused as a result. While Cowman always includes discussions of historic floods in the class, he says this year is unique because the students are able to watch the historical 2011 flood as it happens.

"We're actually able to get out and show the students on the river in real time what some of the impacts of the flood are," Cowman says. "And then we're also discussing what some of the issues will be that have to be dealt with after the flood in terms of how the river is managed to try to keep something like this from happening in the future."

Students taking the course are teachers themselves. The curriculum is geared toward K-12 educators. Cowman says he hopes teachers take what they learn back to their classrooms.

"I hope what they'll do is they'll understand more about what the Missouri River system used to be before it was changed through all of the engineering that we did to it in the 20th century," Cowman says. "I hope that they'll see what the potential of this river really is. We hope that they will more clearly understand what some of the issues are facing the river in terms of managing it through the reservoirs in the channelized section as well as some of the intermediate natural sections immediately below some of the dams."

This year 15 teachers from South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa are taking part in the class, including Teresa Mentzer. She's a high school English teacher in Nebraska. She's also working with the National Park Service this summer as a teacher ranger. She is taking the class to get to know the river better. She says she's learning that the Missouri involves several different perspectives and many groups are interested in the river.

"It's a really complex area where so many different entities take ownership of this place and they're really proud of it," Mentzer says. "And they're very passionate about it. I guess that's what I've learned. You could see where you could become, because it's beautiful."

Beautiful, yes, but this year it's also causing hardship for many South Dakotans. Instructor Tim Cowman says in some ways, this year's flood is just the river behaving like a river.

"I think the flood is telling us that the Missouri River itself and mother nature actually have other things in mind," Cowman says. "And no matter how drastically we engineer it there's always going to be a year where they're going to overwhelm what we can do with engineering. Ultimately we're not going to completely tame a large river like the Missouri River. And although we can go for decades without a serious flood, if we wait long enough the climatic cycles will through something at us that's going to overwhelm what we were able to engineer."

Cowman says the flood of 2011 is the first flood that has really pushed the reservoir system to its limits. Students in the class are discussing what can be done to help the river become more like it used to be, such as widening the upper part of the channelized section to allow the river to reconnect with more of its floodplain. Cowman says that's one option for helping to alleviate the impacts of future floods.