Posted on 06/26/2011 6:52:05 AM PDT by milwguy
Thats the eye-popping thesis suggested by Joe Herring at American Thinker, and his prima facie evidence, while thin, is also hard to get around. The key fact is this:
On February 3, 2011, a series of e-mails from Ft. Pierre SD Director of Public Works Brad Lawrence sounded the alarm loud and clear. In correspondence to the headquarters of the American Water Works Association in Washington, D.C., Lawrence warned that the Corps of Engineers has failed thus far to evacuate enough water from the main stem reservoirs to meet normal runoff conditions. This years runoff will be anything but normal.
For the why, Herring quotes the Corps Master Water Control Manual:
Releases at higher-than-normal rates early in the season that cannot be supported by runoff forecasting techniques is inconsistent with all System purposes other than flood control. All of the other authorized purposes depend upon the accumulation of water in the System rather than the availability of vacant storage space. [Emphasis added.]
Originally, these other purposes were water supply, river navigation and recreation, none of which are served by failing to leave enough reservoir space for normal runoff in a high runoff year. But through thirty years of environmentalist domination of the federal bureaucracy, additional purposes have gained ever higher priority. The Missouri River should be natural:
The Clinton administration threw its support behind the change, officially shifting the priorities of the Missouri River dam system from flood control, facilitation of commercial traffic, and recreation to habitat restoration, wetlands preservation, and culturally sensitive and sustainable biodiversity.
Herring even quotes a Corps biologist celebrating the current flood:
The former function of the river is being restored in this one-year event. In the short term, it could be detrimental, but in the long term it could be very beneficial.
Sherlock Holmes method of exclusion
The direct evidence here is merely suggestive. Habitat restoration is a high priority goal and there is a bit of overt cheerleading for flooding. Far from conclusive, but how else to explain not vacating even a normal amount of reservoir space in a peak snowpack year?
Climate contrarians know to be wary of argument by the principle of exclusion. Thats what the CO2 alarmists do. Eyes wide shut to extensive evidence that 20th century warming was caused by an 80 year grand maximum of solar-magnetic activity, they claim warming has to be due to CO2 because every other possible explanation has been ruled out.
But in The Case of the Waterlogged Corps(e), Sherlocks method of exclusion is reasonable. The usual problem of failing to identify all the possibilities doesnt apply because the list of agency objectives is specified. Of these, habitat restoration is the only one that is served by the Corps actions.
The other possibility is that these government functionaries failed to notice that they had not vacated even the usual amount of space from their reservoirs, but low as expectations are for government work, this isnt really plausible. Such a mistake would have to be motivated, and as Herring points out, we know these peoples motivations. Almost to a man they are eco-leftists, and we know the eco-leftist position on rivers.
It isnt the dot-connecting that is outlandish, it is the dots. People who expressly want to see floodplains returned to their natural state followed policies that guaranteed massive flooding. Herring is right: this calls for investigation.
Rational environmentalism
To the extent that risk of flooding can be lowered by flood-control infrastructure, the extra building on floodplains that this risk-reduction encourages is perfectly rational. What induces irrational building on flood plains is the federal governments longstanding policy of providing subsidized or implicit flood insurance.
After major flooding the government is prone to declare a disaster area. Even if the flood victims are not made whole, their losses are substantially mitigated, reducing the natural disincentive to build in flood zones. Get rid of this market interference and flood damages would be much diminished. In particular, flood plains would end up relegated mainly to agricultural uses that can weather occasional flooding with limited damage.
Seasonal flooding can actually be good for farmland so there is room for a win-win solution where flood control systems are set up to inundate large agricultural bottom lands as necessary to provide room for floodwaters. Instead of farmland on the outside of our riparian cities, substantial amounts of the best farmland would be on the inside of these cities. We see some of this now, but it would go much further if the government limited itself to infrastructure and did not interfere in markets. Safer for people, better for farming, better for migratory birds and the environment, and better for taxpayers.
Not easy to get there, after people have been building on the strength of government promises of relief for many decades, but it is a solution that is rational both economically and environmentally. Unfortunately, this is not what the eco-freaks want.
Instead of natural in the market-driven or liberty-driven sense, they embrace a sans-human naturalism, and it looks like the administrators of our flood-control infrastructure are in this camp. They have been hostile to flood-control infrastructure per se since the Clinton era, which is the only obvious explanation for why this infrastructure has been so completely misused.
New report addresses Devils Lake flooding, lays out possible future plans
Your statement is posed in future tense.
Historically cities grew on banks of rivers because the river was the primary mode of transportation. Wealth was concentrated there over hundreds of years and protecting that wealth is a valid role of government.
Kincaid Mounds State Historic Site:
Welcome to the new reality....
“The actual floodplain is flooded year round (we call it a lake)” - that, is a good one.
Are there alternatives to the crop lands they are flooding, too?
Libertarians never think beyond their inane slogans.
“Washington, DC was built in a swampy area. Under the current insane regulatory system it would never have been built”
Let’s insist it be allowed to return to its natural state beginning tomorrow.
It has to do with wind, rain and temperature. The world's narrowest North/South thermocline runs from Lake Michigan to Posey County, Indiana and that creates a unique situation.
Corn loves it. But so does red wheat and soybeans ~ and the really high ticket "fancy beans" (in the Southern part of that region). There are farmers there who get three crops per year.
LESSON ~ you can always find something that will grow well on whatever soil you have, but some things do better than others. You have to match the crops to the soil. But the Lesson is that without water none of this stuff will happen, yet with too much water you can't plant the fields. You have to design all of your hydraulic control features with the idea in mind that you'd like to keep the floods away from your septic systems, yet you don't want it to gully your fields as it drains off.
Over in the vicinity of the Wabash River (remember ~ with a water flow as great as the Missouri through most of its course, and greater in part) farmers within something like 20 miles of the banks have TILED FIELDS. They actually dig trenches at the ends of fields and place field tiles in there to drain excess above the most advantageous ground water level.
I know that sounds pretty aggressive but you could use most of Indiana for rice paddies if it had a longer single crop growing season. Even in Illinois there are tiled fields along the Vermillion River (which runs parallel to the Wabash).
From my point of view the middle and upper courses of the Missouri River are fit only for dry-land farming with regular time-outs for devastating droughts every 21 or so years. The same with the upper Mississippi ~ best reserved for wheat and cattle. Just not enough water around.
The Corps of Engineers probably ought to fess up to those folks someday that they really can't do navigation, recreation, water retention and flood control in that semi-arid region. The Congress-critters who thought that could be done were trying to get more farmers out there to use vast tracts of the territory otherwise left unoccupied. I'm sure there's room for recreation, and maybe limited shipping ~ but seriously, you have something like a really long Wabash, and NO ONE has considered that navigable for commerce for a couple of centuries!
I can confirm the latter point... we have blue herons in our area and they are NEVER seen to congregate with one another, but always are solitary. Now, Canadian Geese, however...
DC was built in what was then a “miasmic swamp”, which was that era’s way of saying a disease ridden swamp”.
There was no intention of Congress being in secession year round, not was there any tolerance for a huge and meddelsome/controlling Fedocracy.
Some things never change - while Yellow Fever and Malaria are gone from DC, Congress Critter seem to contract severe cases of DC Fever.
DC Fever causes severe, wracking spasms during which crazed acts of Legislation, Regulation and Spendulation occur with frightening rapidity.
“The best bet is to protect some very important spots with dykes”
I am sure South Beach, Key West, and of course San Fransicko, can supply any number of ‘dykes’ for your flood control purposes.
I do, however, wonder how such a flood control usage could avoid the necessary “Point Source Pollution Permit” costs.
Or, is it possible that Holder would consider ‘dykes’ to be a protected class and thus immune to any permitting requirements?
During the years of low water levels in the Missouri River lakes in South Dakota Tom Dachle US Senator (D) fought releases of water that would hurt the tourist industry in his state at the expense of barge traffic on the lower Missouri river.
It was South Dakota vs Missouri fighting for the US Army Corps of Engineers to release or not release water stored in the Missouri River dams.
Make no mistake the actions of the Corps are controlled by the politics of Washington DC.
Here in South Florida we have been having a terrible drought. Sooo, the Army Corps release several feet of Lake Okeechobee in to the spillways that lead to the ocean. Thus exacerbating things.
In several places it is far too much water.
I was just in Arkansas where the Corps failed to release lake water to go along with record snows and then had to release record amounts which caused flooding.
Course you can’t say or do anything when the Corps screw up and it takes your home.
Does this damn gub mint do any f-ing thing right???
My wife, whose family lives in Minot, ND, and I were discussing this issue just the other day. I commented that it doesn’t make sense that water releases were not being done prior to the the snowmelt, and that this flooding in her home town, and home state should have been avoidable.
Building on a flood plain is for the weak of mind...thats why they are designated flood plain...
They invented the word “flood path” to trick flood plain people into thinking they were OK.
Yep, some are that stupid...Years ago one of my son’s found a beautiful piece of land really cheap...I told him to go to the township office and find out why.....It was a flood plain for a river close by. Anyone with brains wouldn’t buy it....neither did he....
There are people who LOVE to live in areas that flood regularly. Indianapolis has a nice subdivision right on the banks of the White River ~ which floods just about every year 2 or 3 times (at that spot).
They are prepared ~ and the river comes, the river goes, and they shovel the silt out, spray everything down with bleach, and move back in. Their thing is sitting in the backyard or down at the boat landing fishing if they are not right on the river. They keep boats at the ready for all sorts of things. Drink a lot of beer, barbeque outdoors every day, fresh broiled fish, drink more beer, roast porkchops, drink beer, run boat, fish, run boat, ski, run boat, barbeque......
It's a lifestyle choice ~ like being on vacation every day!
They need to move their town or buy a lot of dynamite and take out every piece of concrete and levee downstream for 100 miles or so.
They will need a lot of firepower to back that up of course ~
May rains were real kicker' in big water year
If they were intentionally causing these floods they would have shut down the Cooper Nuclear Plant which is very threatened by the flooding and still running. In fact they should have shut it down, but for some reason they seem to be stuck on stupid. They were shocked by the amount of flow. This is what happens when an Ice Age starts. Massive precipitation is required to build the Ice Flows.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.