I’m going to ask a dumb question that perhaps one of you could answer. Having grown up in CA in the great Central Valley California Irrigation District I am familiar with farming by irrigation. We had to study this stuff in school — even in the city — and my grandmother still had a “ranch” which she operated with an uncle where we would visit when I was a child.
All my life I have understood the philosophy of capturing rain water in reservoirs during the rainy season and releasing it during the dry season.
Why has the midwest and the south never adopted a program like this? When I watch the dreadful floods, and all that water going the wrong places, I want to see it captured and aimed toward those districts that really need it.
Since the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers seem to be the bad guys, why couldn’t there be dug a series of reservoirs the length of the river where the floods could be diverted and then released when the farmers were siuffering from drought? Is the elevation wrong? Is there some nosy Sierra Club group agitating for Wild Rivers (dumb idea, IMHO)? Do the folks in the Delta really need all that silt?
Considering how much money all those floods cost every year, I should think a program like that would be bought and paid for in 25-50 years.
Most of the Great Valleys of Calif are Deserts with the bulk of the moisture falling in the mountains mostly snow in the winter months. I remember a couple of floods in Fresno county when the snow melted too fast. I also remember the building of the dams on the San Joaquin and the Kings rivers for flood control and irrigation and many of the rivers north of Sacramento are damed with most of that water being hijacked for the cities to the south and the “Delta Smelt” and Salmon.
As far as the Corn Belt goes I always thought they got enough summer rain plus they have or had a mighty underground Aquifer to pump from but please don’t quote me on any of this as I haven’t had my first glass of wine...