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(Continued from page 16)
• U.S. Highway 18 at the South Dakota-Iowa border east of Canton remained closed Tuesday, but larger trucks and SUVs were moving through the water despite the signs warning against it.
• Flood waters washed out some railroad track just east of the Eastern Farmers Cooperative in Canton. The weather service said 8.4 inches came down in the area during the storm.
• In Sioux Falls, officials said the water treatment plant handled more than 57 million gallons on Monday when an average day involves no more than 16 million gallons. Officials reported street flooding, downed trees and power outages following the storm.
• Golf enthusiasts in nearby Brandon will have to wait a few days before they can tee off at the Brandon Golf Course. Managers said 90 percent of the course is underwater.
• The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Northwestern Division on Tuesday announced it is reducing releases from Gavins Point Dam in Yankton in an effort to reduce the flood risk downstream.
• "Gavins Point Dam releases will be reduced from 30,000 cubic feet per second to 12,000 (cubic feet per second) in response to increased tributary flows," Jody Farhat, chief of the Missouri River Water Management Division, said in a statement.
• Farhat said releases were reduced by 4,000 cubic feet per second Sunday and by 10,000 cubic feet per second Tuesday. An additional 4,000 cubic feet per second reduction is scheduled for Wednesday.
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Threatened bird leads feds to block some drilling
NICHOLAS RICCARDI, Associated Press
• DENVER (AP) -- The federal government this week declared more than 400,000 acres in southwestern Colorado and eastern Utah off-limits to energy exploration or any other kind of development to protect the Gunnison sage grouse, a precursor to a much larger fight over another species of the bird that ranges across 11 Western states.
• The Bureau of Land Management directive released Monday formalizes protections the government had already implemented to preserve the Gunnison grouse. A decision on whether to list it as an endangered species is due in November.
• BLM spokesman Steven Hall said that the protected land falls in 800,000 acres that have been identified as the bird's general range.
• The Gunnison sage grouse only lives in a small sliver of Colorado and Utah and the estimated 4,500 animals remaining are about one-tenth of its original population. (Continued on page 18)
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