I spent Saturday night of this week driving along highway 136 in far northwest Missouri, just 7 miles from my home. The local water plant and elevator have sprouted temporary levees, and the folks who live there have moved most of their possessions to higher ground, or at the least, the possessions they could move.
There is, I suppose, some chance that the Army Corps of Engineers could be wrong, and the levees won’t break, but that chance is small. It is the bitterest of ironies that the crops are beautiful. As much of the Midwest has suffered from too much rain, we’ve had the driest spring in years, and could actually use a rain.
The outdoor writer for the St. Joseph, Mo., newspaper has checked in with one of those articles that are as predictable as hot weather in July, remarking how floods are good for wildlife, and we wouldn’t worry about floods so much if we just let the river run free.
That article followed closely a piece in the Kansas City newspaper describing the difficulties faced by the Corps as they decided to destroy levees along the Mississippi to protect more heavily populated areas further down that river.
Both writers long for a simpler time, when man couldn’t control nature, and didn’t try.
After expressing at least some concern for the farmers losing so much, the Kansas City essayist concluded that we can’t control nature, and shouldn’t even try. Taken to its logical conclusion, that line of thinking would preclude agriculture of any kind, which, after all, is a ten thousand year long effort to manipulate nature for man’s ends.
Logic is not a requirement for a weekly column, but it sure would be nice.
There are steps that the Corps must take to avoid another spring like this one.
The present models don’t allow for the combination of snow pack and late May rains like the one Montana received. At a bare minimum, we’re going to have to change the amount of space in the upstream reservoirs left for flood control in the early spring. This event has been outside the historical record, but it happened, and we’ll have to prepare for a like event some time in the future.
Downstream folks can be excused for wondering whether water was held back for the spring rise to protect endangered species, and whether the reservoirs are held higher in preparation for boating on Memorial Day weekend.
There is the continuing fight between navigation and recreation, but surely everyone concerned will admit that flood control is the first and most important management requirement, with recreation, navigation, and even endangered species coming far behind. People’s lives and livelihoods are being ruined, and we must all work together to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Despite what columnists say, we can’t turn back the clock. People live in the bottoms, work there, and our food supply depends upon the crops raised there.
We will choose to manage the river, because we have no other choice. To tear down the levees and admit defeat is a human choice as well, and the choice is one we can’t afford. We won’t let “nature” make the decision, so its time to spend the money necessary to clean up the mess, manage the system in a way that does everything possible to avoid future floods, and hope that next year is better.