Meetings on Missouri River plan begin this week

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - Meetings begin this week on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' plan for managing the Missouri River over the next year.

The first meeting will be Monday in Omaha. Others will follow through Nov. 3 in the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.

The series begins as river communities clean up from record flooding. The corps released massive amounts of water from the dams along the river to deal with heavy rains and above-average snow melt.

The corps' plan calls for drawing the reservoirs down enough to get rid of the floodwater collected this year, but the corps decided not to clear out any additional flood-storage space in the reservoirs beyond the usual 16.3 million acre feet of water.