Pick carefully wrote his plan to avoid flooding Bismarck and Williston, North Dakota, along with Pierre and Chamberlain, South Dakota, but intentionally flooded the entire productive acreage of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, some 155,000 acres, supporting 349 families of 1,544 individuals. United States Secretary Of The Interior Julius Albert Krug ordered compensation in the form of an equal amount of acreage on lesser lands, at-cost hydroelectric power for irrigation, grazing and watering rights for tribal cattle, and $5,105,625 in payment for lost lands. Colonel Pick revoked this order and all its compensations, then denied the Three Tribes all access to the reservoir which would flood their lands, including the rights to fish, water their cattle, or cut any timber from the land to be flooded. The tribes were likewise forbidden to hire legal counsel with any compensatory money they might receive. The revised plan was approved by Krug.