Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program

The Pick–Sloan Missouri Basin Program, formerly called the Missouri River Basin Project, was initially authorized by the Flood Control Act of 1944, which approved the plan for the conservation, control, and use of water resources in the Missouri River Basin.

The intended beneficial uses of these water resources include flood control, aids to navigation, irrigation, supplemental water supply, power generation, municipal and industrial water supplies, stream-pollution abatement, sediment control, preservation and enhancement of fish and wildlife, and creation of recreation opportunities.

It derives its name from the authors of the program -- Lewis A. Pick, director of the Missouri River office of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, and William Glenn Sloan, director of the Billings, Montana office of the United States Bureau of Reclamation.

In May 1943, the House Flood Control Committee chose the United States Army Corps of Engineers to create a solution for extreme flooding in the Missouri Basin. Lewis A. Pick developed a proposal for the corps called the Pick Plan, which was finished in August of the same year.

The Pick Plan introduced three different projects to be carried out by the Army Corps of Engineers. The first undertaking involved the construction of 1,500 miles of levees from Sioux City to the Mississippi River to protect from Missouri River flooding. The second proposal called for the construction of eighteen dams on the Missouri's tributaries. Eleven of those dams had been previously approved by Congress. Five dams were planned to be located on tributaries of the Republican River in the lower basin. Of the remaining dams, the Pick Plan recommended construction of one on the Bighorn River in Wyoming and another on Montana's Yellowstone River. The Pick Plan's third project was the creation of five multi-purpose dams on the Missouri River. Initially, the plan's total cost was estimated to be $490 million.

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