Friday,  February 8, 2013 • Vol. 13--No. 204 • 30 of 43 •  Other Editions

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money and staff to handle the regulatory duties now done by the NRC and EPA.
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Corps says Missouri River remains at low levels

• OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- Dry weather continues throughout the area that feeds into the Missouri River, so water levels will remain low.
• The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers predicts that runoff into the river above Sioux City, Iowa, will be 80 percent of normal this year.
• So the Corps is expected to keep the amount of water it's releasing out of Gavins Point dam on the South Dakota-Nebraska border at 14,000 cubic feet per second throughout February.
• Around mid-March, the amount of water will be increased to about 25,000 cubic feet per second to help support barge traffic on the river.
• But that will provide only enough water for a minimal channel 8-feet-deep and 200-feet-wide. A normal navigation channel is 9-feet-deep and 300-feet-wide.

  • So barges may not be able to carry full loads.

SD governor says state revenue hitting projections
• PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- State tax collections continue to match earlier projections, an indication South Dakota's economy is performing as expected, Gov. Dennis Daugaard said Thursday.
• The Republican governor said tax collections through the end of January were the same as were projected when he proposed a state budget in early December. However, there is no sign there will be extra money to spend beyond those earlier projections, he said.
• "The good news is the revenue is almost precisely what we were projecting it to be," Daugaard said at his weekly news conference. "To the extent we were all hoping that things might be rosier, they're on track but not any rosier than that."
• When Daugaard proposed his budget, he noted that ongoing state revenue for the current budget year was expected to be about $24 million higher than had been projected when the current budget was passed nearly a year ago by the Legislature. The portion of the state budget funded by general state taxes is nearly $1.3 billion.
• Daugaard also noted that $26.5 million is available for spending on one-time projects this year and next year, and left it up to the Legislature to decide how to allocate that money.
• The governor said the latest revenue projections mean all of that one-time money is still available. Legislators have been talking about using some of it to set up scholarship programs.

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