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cluded officials from Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and Wyoming.
• Brig, Gen. John McMahon, the top military commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers division that includes the Missouri River, said state agencies, Indian tribes and colleges could help to improve the corps' ability to gather water data that could be used for flood predictions.
• McMahon and Doug Kluck, regional climate services director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the network would be useful for gathering information about frost depth and soil moisture content as well as the water content of snow.
• "It not only helps flood prediction and knowledge, but it also helps the other side of the equation. When things dry out, we never know how dry it's really getting,"

Kluck said. "Everybody needs that kind of information."
• McMahon said that by year's end, the corps hopes to have more than $600 million in repairs to levees, dams and other Missouri River public works completed. The repairs are only for damage the agency knows about, and more problems could crop up as work continues, McMahon said.
• McMahon said state and federal officials should also push for widening the river's flood channel,

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