"BILLINGS, Mont. — U.S. government agencies plan to push ahead with a $57 million dam and fish bypass on Montana's Yellowstone River despite concerns among scientists that it won't meet its goal of helping an ancient fish species, officials said Monday.

A new 3,700-page, government-sponsored study of the project calls for no significant changes from an earlier proposal that a federal judge had blocked, according to representatives of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation.

The dam northeast of Glendive would provide irrigation water for more than 50,000 acres of cropland in eastern Montana and western North Dakota. The accompanying bypass is meant to allow endangered, dinosaur-like pallid sturgeon to reach upstream spawning grounds, by traveling up a two-mile-long channel."

Matthew Brown reports for the Associated Press October 17, 2016. [2]