That's a lot of water.

Pulled from the river:
2,500 gallons per minute
150,000 gallons per hour
1,200,000 gallons in 8 hours
3,600,000 gallons in 24 hours

Returned to the river:
180 gallons per minute
10,800 gallons per hour
66,400 in 8 hours
259,200 in 24 hours

total water permanently removed from the river system
2,320 gallons per minute
139,200 gallons per hour
1,113,600 gallons in 8 hours
3,340,800 gallons in 24 hours

And a couple quotes from the Tribune outdoors section.

It's easy enough to take the Missouri River for granted. Anything so close at hand and so accessible — so "there" all the time — might fade from the forefront of our thoughts as we race through our busy days, even where the pace is, well, like the pace here in Great Falls.
It just takes a day on the river though, or a conversation with someone intimately familiar with the river to remind us what a treasure the river really is.

To our benefit, others are realizing that the Missouri constitutes a special resource for us: PPL Montana continues to reimburse those of us who live around the Missouri for the impacts of its seven dams on the Missouri and its two hydro facilities on the Madison. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission requires that.


And, it is ours all the way from its headwaters in the Centennial Mountains of southwestern Montana through the Beaverhead, Big Hole, Gallatin, Jefferson and Madison rivers to the North Dakota border and its union with the Yellowstone.