Mississippi River Flooding , It Seems too Me !

[fordy]

...................Mother nature's solution is too spread the excess water , out , over the landscape that exceeds the volume that can't flow down the main river channel . So , WHY , hasn't the Army Corps simply built large catch basins along the main channel with a dredged channel connecting each designated area with a gate too control access too that area and just start filling these basins UP , instead of forcing all the water down the main channel , building leeve's along the route south in a futile attempt too Totally control Mother nature ? Seems simple enough too me , or have I missed something ? , fordy

[mekasmom]

because the local counties cannot tax water basins are real estate if the government owns them
Those "wet land" basins you are suggesting are owned by government which takes thousands of acres out of the county real estate tax base, there by increasing property taxes for other residents and decreasing income to schools and other municipal entities. It's all about the money.

[Alice In TX/MO]

Since the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, a disaster that killed hundreds, Congress has made protecting the cities on the lower Mississippi a priority. The Army Corps of Engineers has spent $13 billion to fortify cities with floodwalls and carve out overflow basins and ponds -- a departure from the "levees-only" strategy that led to the 1927 calamity.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/05/07...#ixzz1Lfw9hWQw

[wy_white_wolf]

The principle of this idea is used. But instead of putting the "catch basins" in lowlands we build resivors upsteam and try to control the runoff into the major rivers. right now things would be 10x worse if it wasn't for many of the larger ones like Fort Peck in Montana, Glendo ans Seminoe in Wyoming.

In the end when you look at the volume of water in years like this it just isn't possible to hold back that much water. I was just reading that the snowpack in wyoming is about 180% of the 30 year average. That will be a lot a water coming down in a very short time.

WWW

[Ed Norman]

The river is shorter now than it used to be, and a shorter river holds less water. This guy knows the history.

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower
Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles.
That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year.
Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic,
can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period,' just a million
years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards
of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out
over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token
any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now
the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long,
and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together,
and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual
board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science.
One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling
investment of fact.

http://www.online-literature.com/vie...erm=shortening

There used to be thousands of small catch basins that held back the water from snow melt and big rains. They were called sloughes and marshes. Unfortunantly someone figured out that you could put in drain tile or fill them in and plant crops so they were all drained and tiled and there aren't any left. Therefore the thinking that "I do what's best for me and the hell with the folks downstream" has prevailed and you have 500 year floods every 2 years. I wonder what would happen if the farmers were taxed to pay for the damage they caused downstream. I suggest a tax on drain tile. You would be charged so much per foot of drain tile on your land.

[bruce2288]

Heres another option. These areas are called flood plains for a reason. Don't build there! Kind of like building a home on the beach in Florida, then wondering "How in the world did a hurricane wash my house away?" Probably right now in California someone is building home on a severe slope in California which is known to have mud slips.

[Harry Chickpea]

If the eco-nuts can be pushed to the side long enough, I foresee a time when there will be a MASSIVE project with water tunnels that extend all the way from the Mississippi to the Colorado river, perhaps around Lake Meade. The need for water in the southwest is only going to get worse and ultimately the costs of flood control on the Mississippi and costs of getting water to the southwest will make such an expense practical. Part of the problem is that it will take huge amounts of energy to lift that water up. Think along the lines of ten times the power of Hoover Dam to make even a dent.

[fordy]

Originally Posted by Harry Chickpea

If the eco-nuts can be pushed to the side long enough, I foresee a time when there will be a MASSIVE project with water tunnels that extend all the way from the Mississippi to the Colorado river, perhaps around Lake Meade. The need for water in the southwest is only going to get worse and ultimately the costs of flood control on the Mississippi and costs of getting water to the southwest will make such an expense practical. Part of the problem is that it will take huge amounts of energy to lift that water up. Think along the lines of ten times the power of Hoover Dam to make even a dent.

.................Very good idea Harry ! They'd need too build hugh pumping stations because at some point the journey would become a total UP hill push because of the increases in elevation going back west . Maybe they could install enough wind turbines that would be dedicated towards that job , when called upon and provide power for basic consumption the other 95% of the time . , fordy

[RebelDigger]

Originally Posted by bruce2288

Heres another option. These areas are called flood plains for a reason. Don't build there! Kind of like building a home on the beach in Florida, then wondering "How in the world did a hurricane wash my house away?" Probably right now in California someone is building home on a severe slope in California which is known to have mud slips.

Bingo!

[MOgal]

My father was in flood control on the Lower Mississippi in Arkansas or Mississippi his entire professional career. The idea of pumping water to the arid west was discussed way back in the 70's. Came to naught due to expense.

Both the entity for which my father worked and the US Army Corps of Engineers were all "et up" with doing channelization projects. They didn't make sense to me as a kid because what happens to all that water where the channel ended? It really doesn't make sense to me now because like the old commercial said, "You can't fool Mother Nature." Those channels helped the upstream guys but made matters worse for those downstream.

[Tabitha]

with all the money this country wastes on some things they could build a canal system that takes excess water and diverts it to Texas or where ever they need it badly.

Oops. missed that, looks like I am beating a dead horse. I still think it would be money well spent.

[Old Vet]

You forgot one thing most of the eastern Arkansas is in a flood plain and 14 of MO most all of LA and everything from Memphis to AL and MS are in that flood plain. That is where most of the rice and other grains are grown and it runs to near Chicago. So saying don't build their is a pipe dream. People need to be near their farms and if you own 10,000 acres and live 50 miles away you will not have a crop at all.

[Harry Chickpea]

Originally Posted by fordy

.................Very good idea Harry ! They'd need too build hugh pumping stations because at some point the journey would become a total UP hill push because of the increases in elevation going back west . Maybe they could install enough wind turbines that would be dedicated towards that job , when called upon and provide power for basic consumption the other 95% of the time . , fordy

fordy, if there were reservoirs along the way that would act as intermediary storage, that would be about one of the BEST uses for wind turbine/mills. The water doesn't care what time of day or night it gets pumped, the drive could be direct to pumps and the efficiency would be decent. Good idea.

[PrairieOaks]

Nimrod and Bruce 2288 got it right. They are floodplains and if farmers had to interalize the cost of downstream damage, not only flooding but chemical runoff (ie. dead zone in the gulf) then many of these problems would not be of issue. Regard shipping midwest water to the west, it is an arid climate, the natural carrying capicaty is low-don't live there. We will keep our water, the west has used up what little is natural, if they want to stay there, they can solve the water problem themselves.

[texican]

Originally Posted by Nimrod

There used to be thousands of small catch basins that held back the water from snow melt and big rains. They were called sloughes and marshes. Unfortunantly someone figured out that you could put in drain tile or fill them in and plant crops so they were all drained and tiled and there aren't any left. Therefore the thinking that "I do what's best for me and the hell with the folks downstream" has prevailed and you have 500 year floods every 2 years. I wonder what would happen if the farmers were taxed to pay for the damage they caused downstream. I suggest a tax on drain tile. You would be charged so much per foot of drain tile on your land.

True, those catch basins are now called farms...

Tax them, and they'll go out of business, as the 'margins' are razor thin to begin with.

Yearly flooding should be looked forward to... a fresh deposit of silt each year.

If you owned a hundred or a thousand acres of 'backwater land', and you weren't cash rich, what would you do with the land, work it, and make a living, and to hell with others, or be altruistic and starve to death? Then a wiser man buys the land (as the heirs have long ago moved to the big city, not wanting to starve along with the altruistic parents) and 'tiles it' and raises crops, feeding hungry folks, and other ----------s downstream, that built their fine cities on a floodplain get flooded out.

There's a wise old saying....
“Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.”

- William Jennings Bryan

My sympathy level goes down dramatically for anyone unwise enough to buy or build in a flood zone. If you build in a flood zone, I'd recommend building on hill, natural or manmade...

[MO_cows]

For everybody who thinks it is so simple as to let all the flood plains sit au naturaland unoccupied, take a look at a topographical map or Corps of Engineers survey. A HUGE chunk of farmland would go out of production, enough to disrupt the food supply and increase prices, perhaps even enough to create hunger. Many major cities would cease to exist. Remember we were new to this land when development started and we have been learning as we go about the river systems. We have a tiger by the tail now and can't let go. Although if a way to send the excess water to where it is needed could be feasible, I would be all for it.

[Darren]

The flow at Vicksburg is currently 1,930 kcfs. That is 1,930 1000 cubic feet per second or about two million cubic feet of water per second.
One cubic foot of water contains 7.48 gallons of water. That means that right now over 14 million gallons of water are passing Vicksburg in an eye blink.

In a minute 866 million gallons pass by. In an hour 52 billion gallons of water pass by. In a day over one trillion gallons of water pass by. That's so much water it's hard to even think about it.

http://rivers.anglerguide.com/flows/...bs&gauge=VCKM6

Keep in mind the Mississippi drains a big chunk of the United States including the area drained by the Ohio River. The Corps does regulate reservoirs up stream to coordinate the flows. There's just too much water with extreme events.

[plowjockey]

Originally Posted by fordy

...................Mother nature's solution is too spread the excess water , out , over the landscape that exceeds the volume that can't flow down the main river channel . So , WHY , hasn't the Army Corps simply built large catch basins along the main channel with a dredged channel connecting each designated area with a gate too control access too that area and just start filling these basins UP , instead of forcing all the water down the main channel , building leeve's along the route south in a futile attempt too Totally control Mother nature ? Seems simple enough too me , or have I missed something ? , fordy

Mother Nature has been out of the picture, for hundreds of years.

It's not just about the Mississippi river and it's controls (or lack therof).

Nearly all of the the Mississippi river drainage basin, has been altered for good.

Most of the woods, in the entire Midwest, have been removed and replaced with farmland, where rain water runs off quickly, taking top soil and chemicals with it, headed toward the river. Nearly everything else, is either roads, homes, large business buildings and huge parkig lots, where the rainwater cannot penetrate the soil.

There are flood control dams, on some feeder rivers, but they only protect flooding in the immediate areas down river. They can fill quickly, so water has to be relaesed as fast as it possibly can, without creating flooding. This still puts a big load on the Miss.

It's all gotta go somewhere. That somewhere is the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico.

[DryHeat]

If you want a detailed and complex discussion of the issues and history of Mississippi River flood control efforts, I recommend John Barry's "RISING TIDE: THE GREAT MISSISSIPPI FLOOD OF 1927"; he's the same John Barry who wrote "The Great Influenza." There's a lot of discussion of politics and personalities of those days in it, just as there is in "Influenza," but a lot of science and history, too. It's available used on Amazon.

I seem to recall that the lead-up to those 1927 main drainage floods was so severe (constant heavy storms and rain all over the eastern US, for a couple of months) that ultimately something like TEN percent of Americans had to leave their homes.