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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.
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.
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?
I live there, I have flood insurance. My insurance company wont cover a single cent because the flood is man made. Now what smart ass?
Wait, wait. Insurance companies exclude acts of God AND acts of man? Doesn't that mean they never pay out...oooooh.
The insurance business needs some serious fucking regulation.
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.
No the people building million dollar homes on the banks of a river that floods yearly, are the failures here.
If they released water at the wrong time of the year it could wreck havoc on the fish population, which would result in people complaining that the corps is a failure for letting the fish die that the fishermen depended on.
Rock and a hard place. Frankly the fact that they have been able to control as much flooding as they have, with the resources they have speaks volumes.
In our country at this time we dont seem to want to fund our infrastructure. So when it cannot meet our needs, do we blame ourselves for not paying for stronger levies? No, we blame the people who have done the most with the least, because we failed to pay for the damn shit.
I personally expect to see more complaints like this, when our bridges fail, and our damns fail, and our power systems fail. I can see it now, asshats like you saying "Those damn (Insert government agency) failed to build a damn in the 40s that could last 70 years."
Fuck off.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Wow, the Malthusian liberal line is out in force today.
South and North Dakota's use of federal money has nothing whatsoever to do with welfare moms and to high a birth rate.
Federal funds come into the Midwest in the form of farm subsidies and or the Dakotas, in the form of money going to Indian reservations. Those reservations are a prime example of how federal handouts don't work, but are the last spending that the liberal elites in the states you mentioned would end.
Very good arguments to end farm subsides do exist, though.
Your comments however are standard costal elitist verbal vomit.
The gist of this story asks whether the Corps could have avoided the unmitigated devastation they're raining down on these communities.
As an engineer myself, I do have some spathy as to their predicament. They're faced with some hard challenges. But as a South Dakotan, I know for a fact that management of the dams has become much more about politics than it is about science. Figuring out what the policy needs to be to prevent being in this situation again must be a top priority.
I really believe that there are engineering solutions that will prevent this happening again in the future. I fear that there are political solutions that will guarantee that this happens again in the future.
But getting back to your comment. Your comment is hateful bile that is of no value at all to anyone.
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
Who is "we"? The fine people of Louisiana, for example, DID pay for infrastructure improvements. Their fearless leaders spent the money elsewhere.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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'.
Eh, just say it's necessary and proper to regulate interstate commerce. Name any conceivable thing any government may ever want to do, which isn't covered by that power.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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?
Indian subsidies are reparations, so it's kind of a different thing.
So, for how long do these reparations last, and when can we stop with the apartheid and enforced isolation of native folk under that name?
I mean, seriously - I don't see Germany paying general reparations money to Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, most of Eastern Europe, etc. over WWII - and that was a hell of a lot more recent than Wounded Knee, dontcha think? As for "stolen land", yup - human history is basically full of examples of that. It's an un-doable part of our past, and maybe it's time we stopped guilting ourselves so much over it and perpetuating the BS that goes with it.
Of course, if you think differently, then you're more than free to start buying ancestral tribal lands and handing it over to the nearest American with native blood. While my own ancestry dictates such land to be in North Carolina, I'll be happy with a few acres a lot closer to my job out here in the Pacific Northwest if that's okay with you. ;)
Point is, calling it reparations is ludicrous at this point. It should just be called what it is - paternalistic allowance money.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Wow, the Malthusian liberal line is out in force today.
Malthus was a conservative parson.
This situation couldn't be further from what happened in New Orleans. The current flooding seems to be an example of a flood control system working as intended, albeit with unintended consequences. In New Orleans, the Corps' system of protection was undermined by the Corps' actions in maintaining MRGO; while the Corps could not be held liable for its negligent maintenance of the levies, it could be (and was) held liable for its negligent maintenance of the channel (ruling available at local news site http://www.wdsu.com/r/21668365/detail.html ), given that the channel increased the power of the storm surge into New Orleans.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
The insurance business is probably the most heavily regulated business around.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
So, you're proposing to pay the local thugs $100K for every woman they force to get sterilized?
Or don't you think that some rebel thug (the kind of guy who moves in, rapes kills and plunders an area, then moves on) is going to pass up the chance to make a few tens of millions?
Or perhaps you thought that the local thugs are going to let the women KEEP the $100K?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"