The state Water Commission has approved 300-thousand dollars to help fund a study of the Souris River Basin. Tim Fay is an engineer with the State Water Commission. He says after having a wake-up call with the 2011 floods, officials from the U-S and Canada agreed to review the hydrology and hydraulics of the region and whether any adjustments need to be made in the basin operating plans…
“You can adjust the way you operate the dams. You can adjust some other things too, like operating settings – when you start releasing, how much you release, what target flows are; there are a lot of tweaks that can be done. The operating plans for the dams were well done in their day, but technology has advanced quite a bit since that day and there may be things that we can learn from that newer technology to lead to better operations.”
Fay says funding put up by the Water Commission will help organize and get the project going. He says U-S and Canadian officials will also have to contribute in order to finish the three-year study.
