The Flood Control Act of 1944 established a comprehensive plan for flood control and other purposes, such as hydroelectric power production, in the Missouri River Basin. The Pick-Sloan Plan—a joint water development program designed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) and the Department of the Interior’s (Interior) Bureau of Reclamation—included the construction of five dams on the Missouri River, including the Garrison Dam in North Dakota and the Oahe, Fort Randall, Big Bend, and Gavins Point Dams in South Dakota. The construction of the Fort Randall Dam, located 7 miles above the Nebraska line in south-central South Dakota, began in May 1946 and was officially dedicated in August 1956. The dam is 160 feet high, and the reservoir behind it, known as Lake Case, stretches 107 miles to the northwest. (See fig. 1.) In September 1959, the Corps began work on the Big Bend Dam, which is about 100 miles northwest of the Fort Randall Dam on land belonging to both the Crow Creek Sioux and Lower Brule Sioux tribes. The Big Bend Dam is 95 feet high and was completed in September 1966. The reservoir behind the dam, known as Lake Sharpe, is 20 miles long. (See fig. 2.) The Crow Creek Sioux and Lower Brule Sioux tribes reside on reservations located across the Missouri River from one another in central South Dakota. The Crow Creek reservation includes about 225,000 acres, 56 percent of which is owned by the tribe or individual Indians. According to the 2000 Census, the Crow Creek reservation has 2,199 residents, with the majority residing in the community of Fort Thompson. The Lower Brule reservation includes about 226,000 acres, 60 percent of which is owned by the tribe or individual Indians. According to the 2000 Census, the Lower Brule reservation has 1,355 residents, including several hundred who reside in the community of Lower Brule. Both reservations include some non- Indians, and both tribes have several hundred members who do not live on the reservations. The major economic activities for both the Crow Creek Sioux and Lower Brule Sioux tribes are cattle ranching and farming, and both tribes provide guided hunting for fowl and other game. Each tribe also operates a casino and a hotel. Both tribes are governed by a tribal council under their respective tribal constitutions, and each tribal council is led by a tribal chairman. The major employers on the reservations are the tribes, the casinos, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Indian Health Service. In addition, the Lower Brule Sioux tribe provides employment through the Lower Brule Farm Corporation, which is the nation’s number one popcorn producer. See appendix II for a map of the Crow Creek and Lower Brule reservations and the locations of the previously mentioned dams and reservoirs. The construction of the Fort Randall Dam caused the flooding of more than 17,000 acres of Crow Creek and Lower Brule reservation land and the displacement of more than 100 tribal families. After these two tribes sustained major damage from this project, the construction of the Big Bend Dam inundated over 20,000 additional acres of their reservations. This flooding displaced more families, some of whom had moved earlier as a result of flooding from the Fort Randall Dam. (See table 1.) Flooding from the installation of both dams resulted in the loss of valuable timber and pasture and forced families to move to less desirable land, which affected their way of life. During the early 1950s, the Corps; Interior, through its Missouri River Basin Investigations Unit (MRBI); and the tribes—represented through tribal negotiating committees—developed their own estimates of the damages caused by the Fort Randall Dam. Discussions and informal negotiating conferences were held among the three parties in 1953 to try to arrive at acceptable compensation for damages. At that point, the Fort Randall Dam had been closed since July 1952 and portions of the reservations were underwater. The MRBI’s appraisal of damages was about $398,000 for Crow Creek and about $271,000 for Lower Brule, which was higher than the Corps’ proposal. Both the MRBI appraisal and the Corps’ proposal were substantially lower than the tribes’ settlement proposals, and the parties were unable to reach settlement. The Corps planned to take the land by condemnation, but in July 1954 decided against that action when the Congress authorized and directed the Corps and Interior to jointly negotiate separate settlements with the tribes. Meanwhile, the tribes arranged to have settlement bills introduced in July 1954. These bills requested $1.7 million for damages for the Crow Creek Sioux tribe and $2.5 million for damages for the Lower Brule Sioux tribe. Both of these bills also contained requests for about $2.5 million each for rehabilitation funds. The first formal negotiating conference was held among the parties in November 1954, and further discussions continued over several more years after the bills were introduced, but, again, the parties could not reach settlement. In 1955, with negotiations stalled, the Corps requested and obtained an official declaration of taking. The tribes—with their lands now flooded—received funds based on the earlier MRBI appraisal figures, with the understanding that negotiations for additional funds would continue. The tribes continued to insist on receiving substantially higher compensation amounts for damages, and additional funds for rehabilitation, as part of the settlement. The amounts the tribes requested for rehabilitation fluctuated in tribal settlement proposals between 1954 and 1957, but both the Corps and the MRBI maintained that rehabilitation funding was not within the scope of the negotiations. In March 1958, each tribe’s negotiating committee submitted new proposals at compensation hearings for the Fort Randall Dam. The Crow Creek Sioux tribe proposed compensation of about $2.2 million for damages and administrative expenses related to the settlement, and the Lower Brule Sioux tribe proposed compensation of about $1.8 million for damages and administrative expenses. Neither proposal included funds for rehabilitation because both tribes agreed with the government’s request to wait to procure these funds in the Big Bend Dam compensation request. In May 1958, bills were introduced in the Congress with amounts that were less than the tribes had proposed through their negotiating committees, with the amount for direct damages from Fort Randall Dam construction being substantially reduced. According to House reports, both the tribes and the Corps agreed to the amounts proposed for damages. Later that summer, amendments to the bills reduced the amount for indirect damages for both tribes. In September 1958, the Congress authorized a payment of about $1.5 million to the Crow Creek Sioux tribe, and almost $1.1 million to the Lower Brule Sioux tribe. See table 2 for a summary of selected settlement proposals related to the Fort Randall Dam. In contrast to the Fort Randall negotiations, the compensation for the construction of the Big Bend Dam was granted quickly. In bills introduced in March 1961, the Crow Creek Sioux tribe requested over $1 million for damages and administrative expenses as a result of the Big Bend Dam construction. The Lower Brule Sioux tribe requested close to $2.4 million for damages, administrative expenses, and a new school. In addition, both tribes requested the rehabilitation funds that had not been included in the Fort Randall Dam settlement—that is, the Crow Creek Sioux tribe requested more than $4 million and the Lower Brule Sioux tribe requested about $2.7 million. In June 1961, the government and the tribes agreed to a reduction in direct damages, while the tribes requested an increase to the amount for indirect damages, bringing the total amount of compensation, including rehabilitation, requested by the Crow Creek Sioux and Lower Brule Sioux tribes to about $4.9 million for each tribe. In subsequent bills over the next year, however, the Congress lowered indirect damages considerably and dropped the amount requested for a new school for Lower Brule. The amounts requested for administrative expenses and rehabilitation were also reduced. In October 1962, the Congress authorized a payment of $4.4 million to the Crow Creek Sioux tribe and about $3.3 million to the Lower Brule Sioux tribe. See table 3 for a summary of selected settlement proposals related to the Big Bend Dam. See appendixes III and IV for a timeline summary of the settlement negotiations and compensation for the two dams for the Crow Creek Sioux and Lower Brule Sioux tribes, respectively. Tribes at five other reservations affected by flood control projects along the Missouri River incurred losses ranging from about 600 acres to over 150,000 acres. These tribes received some compensation, primarily during the 1950s, for the damages they sustained. However, beginning in the 1980s, some of these tribes began requesting additional compensation. The Congress responded to their requests by authorizing the establishment of development trust funds. (See table 4.) The tribes at the Fort Berthold, Standing Rock, and Cheyenne River reservations received compensation within the ranges we had suggested the Congress consider in our reviews of the tribes’ additional compensation claims. The ranges were based on the current value of the difference between each tribes’ final asking price and the amount that the Congress authorized. We were not asked to review the additional compensation claims for the Crow Creek Sioux and Lower Brule Sioux tribes in the 1990s or for the Santee Sioux and Yankton Sioux tribes in 2002. The Crow Creek Sioux and Lower Brule Sioux tribes’ consultant differed from the approach we used in our prior reports. The consultant used a variety of settlement proposals, instead of consistently using the tribes’ final asking prices, in calculating the difference between what the tribes asked for and what the Congress authorized. As a result, the consultant’s proposed compensation estimates are higher than if he had consistently used the tribes’ final asking prices. In addition, the consultant provided only the highest additional compensation value, rather than a range of possible additional compensation from which the Congress could choose. To arrive at an additional compensation estimate, the consultant did not consistently use the tribes’ final asking prices when calculating the difference between what the tribes asked for and what they finally received.