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The Intentional Flooding of America's Heartland
Hugh Pickens writes "Joe Herring writes that sixty years ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began the process of taming the Missouri by constructing massive dams at the top to moderate flow to the smaller dams below, generating electricity while providing desperately needed control of the river's devastating floods. But after about thirty years of operation, as the environmentalist movement gained strength throughout the seventies and eighties, the Corps received a great deal of pressure to include specific environmental concerns into their Master Water Control Manual, the 'bible' for the operation of the dam system, as preservation of habitat for at-risk bird and fish populations soon became a hot issue among the burgeoning environmental lobby. The Corps began to utilize the dam system to mimic the previous flow cycles of the original river, holding back large amounts of water upstream during the winter and early spring in order to release them rapidly as a spring pulse. 'Whether warned or not, the fact remains that had the Corps been true to its original mission of flood control, the dams would not have been full in preparation for a spring pulse,' writes Herring. 'The dams could further have easily handled the additional runoff without the need to inundate a sizable chunk of nine states.' The horrifying consequence is water rushing from the dams on the Missouri twice as fast as the highest previous releases on record while the levees that protect the cities and towns downstream were constructed to handle the flow rates promised at the time of the dam's construction."
And you're dammed if you don't.
Growth and over population are at the root of this. We can not destroy nature and yet we need land urgently to raise crops and house the ever rising population. Science can not save us form total stupidity. Roll back birth rates and leave larger sections of the land unaffected and free of human uses or else we will pay a price we can not afford.
Move out of the flood zones or buy flood insurance. Its no different than the people that blamed the Army Corps when New Orleans flooded. Wake up people, you're living below sea level (New Orleans) or living in the 100 year flood plain (Midwest). What did you really think was going to happen?
Sen. Blunt characterized the current flooding as "entirely preventable" and told reporters that he intends to force changes to the plan.
Given the volume of water the Corps is trying to manage, that statement is unbelievable hogwash. Ignorance that goes far beyond the people who try to argue "intelligent design" has a scientific basis. It reminds me of the attempts to blame poor neighborhoods for the mortgage crisis, even though the overall default rate in poor, minority neighborhoods was lower than upper-middle class white neighborhoods.
Couldn't have anything to do with snow pack and rainfall being over double the norm, it's got to be those dang environmentalists.
Using natural and man-made disasters to demigod your political opposition. We really have turned into a pathetic bunch. This tripe doesn't belong on Slashdot.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
If you don't want to get flooded don't live on a fucking flood plain.
Systems built around "average" rainfall will fail eventually because the climate is NOT stable on a year to year basis. You either build levees and dams for a once in a thousand years worst case scenario or you accept you will get the occasional massive flood that overwhelms systems built around "average" rainfall.
What actually happens is the dams and levees get built to handle the last major flood. That plan failed in Queensland Australia at the beginning of this year.
People need to accept that they don't have absolute control over their lives. Nature happens.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Hmm, the american thinker article seems pretty trollish, utilizing descriptions that I would generally find in political hate speech, blaming environmentalists for the flooding. The articles point isn't to find root cause, but to spread hate at environmental groups.
A quick google search reveals that the american thinker is indeed a conservative online magazine. I would hope that folks realize there is a war of information out there between extremes of the political spectrum and that we are better off not spreading those words of hate. The extremists are always going to be looking to enlist you in their war, by claiming the other side is outrageous.
Who Joe Herring is, is not the issue. It's not the messenger, it's the message. Unless you want to indulge in a lot of ad hominem arguments.
Of course the message leaves something to be desired. But that is the important part, not whether he is a lawyer from New York, or a plumber from Milwaukee.
This is exactly right. The dams were NOT just built for flood control. They were built to generate electricity. When you empty out the reservoirs, you don't have any water to generate electricity.They were also built to allow navigation, and when you empty out the reservoirs you don't have water to sustain river flows for navigation. The claim that this was caused by environmental concerns is just wing-nut conspiracy theorist nonsense.
But it will get repeated over and over again until it is treated as common knowledge.
If I'm being asked to trust what Joe Herring says because of who he is, then of course I need to know who he is. He doesn't present evidence to back up many of his assertions, he just writes stuff and hopes I'll believe it:
Says who?
Says who?
Says who?
I don't have time to read everything, and many "messages" can be safely ignored based on who the messenger is.
Like this one, for example.
Actually, I don't need to know who Joe Herring is in this case, the writing style clearly show that's it's written by someone with an axe to grind, and coming from a politically motivated position - I really don't need to wade through all that crap just in case he stumbled on a valid point somewhere.
sic transit gloria mundi
It's not the messenger, it's the message.
It's a little hard to take seriously a message from a web site that argues that Hitler was a "green" and that "Nazi SS doctrine (was) an explosive concoction of eugenics and environmentalism loaded with eco-imperialistic ambitions that had devastating consequences on the Eastern Front in World War II." Seriously, what? The Nazi SS doctrine was environmentalism? Environmentalism and eco-imperialism were responsible for the Eastern Front in WWII? Crazy.
It's high time that "the Heartland" pulled their heads out of Jeebus's butthole long enough to realize that we're fucking up our climate. FUCK EM.
Did you eat today? Thank 'the Heartland'.
Good points. But silting up is potentially worse than you describe because when "the bottom of the river bed is well above the floodplain" the river can change its course. Perhaps mere miles. Perhaps dozens or hundreds of miles. Often permanently.
Without the spring pulse, river cities could become high and dry, and non-river cities could find themselves underwater for a hundred years. Somewhat randomly.
That is what meandering rivers in flattish floodplains naturally do, even without levees. Mis-managed levees make the process even more exciting, while offering a veneer of apparent safety
If not for the Army Corps of engineers, New Orleans itself could have already become a city in the arm pit of a swamp, and not adjacent to the Mississippi anymore.
Are the communities that live on the river okay with those kinds of changes, instead of the relatively ordered flooding we have now?