FORT PIERRE — Gov. Mike Rounds called Friday for governments to take a 21st century approach for uses of the Missouri River.

The river’s management should be updated to better reflect modern priorities of fishing and recreation, he told a gathering of tribal, state and federal officials from throughout the Missouri River basin.

Further, he said a five-year federal study now under way must be broadened to cover the Missouri’s role in providing the water needed for commercial navigation on the Mississippi River.

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The federal system of six dams and reservoirs on the upper Missouri River, including four in South Dakota, was constructed as a result of the 1944 flood control act passed by Congress.

The South Dakota governor said two of the original priorities — minimizing floods and producing hydro-electricity — have proven to be immensely beneficial to the public.

But agricultural irrigation hasn’t met the 1940s expectations and consequently there hasn’t been as much demand for commercial barges to haul farm supplies and commodities on the river’s lower half, according to Rounds.

Meanwhile fishing and recreational use on the upper river has grown 15 times larger from where it began, he said, and a major new use is pipeline systems which when completed will cover two-thirds of South Dakota’s land mass and deliver drinking water from the Missouri River to half of the state’s population.

Rounds told the gathering of representatives and officials at the meeting of the Missouri River Association of States and Tribes that the 1944 congressional act needs to be brought into the current century by re-establishing the priorities.

“We can’t change the past. It’s gone. We can create a new future. We also have to take advantage of this opportunity because it may not happen again for another 65 years,” he said.

One big step in that direction would be what Rounds described as an open discussion of the water needs at St. Louis, Mo., where the Missouri River meets the Mississippi River.

The Missouri River appears to often be managed to provide the additional flow necessary for the Mississippi River’s navigation industry, even though Mississippi River navigation isn’t a clearly authorized priority for management the Missouri River system.

“If we don’t recognize that as an issue we probably won’t go far in bringing those folks into the discussion,” Rounds said. “It’s the Mississippi that driving this issue in the southern (downstream) part of our (Missouri River) area.”