Building A Dam

Munson: Tourists converge on surging Gavins dam

Yankton, S.D. - There's not much recreational about the Missouri River below this point, unless stacking sandbags and shoring up levees rank among your hobbies.

Pleasure cruises have been forbidden while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers attempts to tame the historic flow of snowmelt and rainwater coursing downstream. Entire towns in Iowa have fled this Big Muddy.

In contrast, tourists have flocked to the Missouri here at a viewing deck just below Gavins Point Dam. This scenic spot has transformed into a makeshift waterpark with a constant flow of onlookers - many with Iowa license plates from Sioux and Woodbury counties among them.

Kids frolicked in the spray last week as 160,000 cubic feet per second of water gushed through the dam's 14 spillway gates, churned into a white froth and occasionally splashed up over the railings.

Yankton, a city of 14,545 residents, claims a major medical center as well as Mount Marty, a Catholic liberal arts college with 1,100 students. But Iowans this spring and summer have had Yankton on the brain for its dam alone - although they tend to spell "dam" differently when debating this leaky spigot that has plagued Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri.

Jean Benson, 49, was among last week's Gavins Point gawkers. She lives in Cherokee, Ia., but has been visiting Lewis & Clark Lake since ninth grade; she still stays in her late parents' cabin perched just above the dam in the Hideaway Acres development.

"I have never seen anything like this, even remotely like this," Benson marveled with a Nikon slung around her neck. "It's just one big whitecap."

Benson also has a personal perspective on the downstream deluge. Her older brother, Kim Kletschke, was forced to evacuate his new townhouse in Dakota Dunes, S.D., a golf community that's part of the Sioux City metro. He had moved into the 3,500-square-foot home in February, only to see his street, Pinehurst Trail, buried beneath a hastily constructed secondary levee a few months later.

It was a wild scene with "3,000 people scrambling to tear everything they could out of their houses," Kletschke, 58, said of the mad dash that began Memorial Day weekend.

Last week, Benson gazed at the dam and said she was "about in tears, because this is not going to be good when it hits Sioux City."

In a normal year, 24.4 million acre feet of Missouri River water flows past Sioux City. This year's estimate for total flow is more than twice that: 54 million acre feet.

Best OSU Game of 2010-2011 Tourney, 4 vs 5 (1st ... - Building The Dam

The first round continues with the four seed Arizona State (Game 2) baseball game against the five seed Arizona basketball game. The voting should be tight in this one, as both were incredible games with exciting finishes.

In the ASU baseball game, the Beavers trailed the Sun Devils 6-2 going into the seventh inning. Oregon State mounted a furious rally though with three runs in the seventh, one in the eighth, and a walk-off walk in the ninth to clinch a series win over ASU.

The spotlight belonged to Jared Cunningham in the Arizona basketball game. Cunningham not only tied the Oregon State record for consecutive free throws made at 34, but he also won Hoop Manifesto's "Dunk of the Year" tournament with his "Kiss the Sky" tip-jam in this game (OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO CUNNINGHAM). The Beavers would go on to win the game, 76-75, and with the win they were tied for first in the Pac-10 after the first week of play. 

Voting will close on Tuesday morning at 12:15 AM.

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Living in the Environment, Principles, Connections, and Solutions