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The Upper Basins' Political Conundrum: A Deal is Not a Deal The second detail concerned the Corps' second and expanded plan for the comprehensive development of the basin. The Corps' first comprehensive plan for the Missouri River Basin had been embraced by Congress in 1938. It emphasized flood control features for the benefit of the lower mainstem states. However, it was not based on the construction of major upstream flood control reservoirs on the mainstem, but rather looked to levees, dikes, and relatively small flood control reservoirs on tributaries to the lower mainstem of the river. The Corps' second plan, which came to be known as the Pick Plan after Colonel Lewis A. Pick, the Division Engineer of the Corps' Missouri River Division, took a different approach than its 1938 plan. In May of 1943, at a Congressional hearing which had been prompted by major floods on the Missouri in 1942 and 1943, and in a meeting of basinwide interests a week later,lls Colonel Pick: ... asserted that the program authorized in the prewar period [i.e., the Corps' 1938 plan) could not provide the necessary [flood control) protection. He stressed "comprehensive ultimate development," by which he meant storing behind big dams similar to Fort Peck as much water as possible .... Pick rejected any emphasis on traditional flood control measures, such as cutoffs, and levees, until a comprehensive plan for dams was in place. ... And he stated boldly to the state delegates in Omaha that "we must consider other water uses in connection with flood control. X114 Pick's concept, when fleshed out into a basinwide plan, called for the construction of four major dams and a fifth smaller dam on the mainstem in North and South Dakota with a total storage capacity of about 35 million acre-feet, and two major dams in the Yellowstone River Basin in Montana and Wyoming with a total capacity of about 5.7 million acre-feet. Ft. Peck would have continued to be devoted to navigation and flood control. The Pick Plan, which was only a few pages long, emphasized flood control and made no explicit provision for irrigation. However, the Corps stressed that it was a plan which "... provided a 'flexible basis' for securing the necessary storage and obtaining the full multiple-purpose use of the basin's water.i115 "3 This was the meetimg at which the Missouri River States Committee was formed. 14 J. FERRELL, supra note 103, at 10. Footnotes omitted. its Id. at 16. Footnote omitted. 38 1 1 1 s