MANHATTAN- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has declared an emergency throughout its Kansas City District, which includes lakes Wilson, Kanopolis and eight others in Kansas, because of high river levels and a rainy forecast in northwest Missouri.
The Level III emergency allows sponsors of levees to obtain
technical assistance for damage to qualifying levees caused by the high water.
Judd Kneuvean, emergency management director for the Kansas City District, says the corps has delivered 43,000 sandbags for use in the Blue River Basin. The corps also sent 1,000 sandbags to Manhattan.
Brian McNulty, Operations Project Manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, told the Manhattan City Commission on Tuesday night that Tuttle Creek Lake is the workhorse for the Kansas River.
It is the largest flood control facility in the state of Kansas with 2.2 million acres feet of storage. He went on to tell the Commission that the elevation of the lake is normally at 1075, and is running at about 1109.5. The tops of the gates are at an elevation of 1136.
There have been several factors in the rise of the lake elevation, the first being the constant rainfall the basin has received.
The second factor was the storms that went through on Sunday night.
“The storm on Sunday night, there were two parts to that,” said McNulty. “The first storm occurred in a place where even if our releases would have been cut back, our water was already in the channel and it wouldn’t have done any good to reduce the peak flows down in the Missouri for that.”
He added that Clinton and Perry lakes were close enough to the storm, and were required to stop their outflow.
“When the second wave came through, it was going to add to the peak flooding down stream,” said McNulty. “That’s when the decision was made to cut Tuttle down to minimum flows.”
Because all of the Kansas lakes are operated as a system, the conditions of the rivers down stream have one of the main factors in the rising elevation of the lake. Because of flooding in the rest of the state, conditions have not allowed them to go over a 16,000 cfs outflow, causing the lake elevation to build.
Pumping plants have been activated at the Blue Rapids levy, and have been running 24 hours during this high water time.
McNulty stressed that we are at about a 7-8 year elevation level, topping out at around 1114 on Monday.
McNulty confirmed a rumor one of the gates was not working. One of the gates in the dam is currently out of service for rehabilitation. It’s removed from the slot and sitting on the service floor going through wheel realignment. The dam still has 3 service gates functioning, and they can fill the channel if needed.
-The Associated Press contributed to this report