I don't have enough of a scientific background to understand fully what this story is about, but the premise of the story is important, so I wanted to post an article on it.
Today, the American Thinker posted a story about the flooding that has taken place in the midwest this year. The premise of the article is that the flooding was avoidable. Unfortunately this premise is not out of line. The devastation we saw in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina could be partially traced to the Army Corps of Engineers being prevented from placing a floodgate system on Lake Pontchartrain to prevent the kind of flooding that occurred after the hurricane.
According to Discover The Networks:
"In 1977, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) was slated to launch its Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Barrier Project, which called for the construction of levees at two strategic locations -- the Rigolets and Chef Menteur passes -- to prevent massive storms on the Gulf of Mexico from causing Lake Pontchartrain to flood the city of New Orleans (which is below sea level). A state environmentalist group known as Save Our WetLands (SOWL) believed that these proposed levees would negatively affect the area surrounding Lake Pontchartrain. Further, the organization was convinced that the construction of the levees would be merely the first step in a malicious plan to drain Lake Pontchartrain entirely and open the area to capitalist investment, which it regarded as a de facto evil. Thus SOWL filed a lawsuit to prevent the ACE from building the fortifications.
"On December 30, 1977, U.S. District Judge Charles Schwartz, Jr. ruled in behalf of SOWL by issuing an injunction demanding that the Corps of Engineers draw up a second environmental-impact statement, three years after the Corps had submitted the first one. Ultimately, the project was aborted in favor of a campaign whereby the government would merely build up existing levees."
Well, here we are again. The American Thinker article reports:
"Some sixty years ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) began the process of taming the Missouri by constructing a series of six dams. The idea was simple: massive dams at the top moderating flow to the smaller dams below, generating electricity while providing desperately needed control of the river's devastating floods."
This program was a success. However, during the Clinton Administration, the priorities of the program changed from flood control, facilitation of commercial traffic, and recreation to habitat restoration, wetlands preservation, and culturally sensitive and sustainable biodiversity. The bottom line here is that someone in Washington decided that animals were more importatnt than people and more important than the farms that feed the American people.
The article at the American Thinker further reports:
"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." The water flows would then be restricted to facilitate a summer drawdown of stream levels. This new policy was highly disruptive to barge traffic and caused frequent localized flooding, but a multi-year drought masked the full impact of the dangerous risks the Corps was taking.
"This year, despite more than double the usual amount of mountain and high plains snowpack (and the ever-present risk of strong spring storms), the true believers in the Corps have persisted in following the revised MWCM, recklessly endangering millions of residents downstream."
The flooding in the midwest this year was a man-made disaster. The article at the American Thinker gives the details on how much water was actually released and its impact. The bottom line here is simple: we need sanity in Washington--we don't seem to have it right now. There is nothing wrong with wanting to preserve the environment. There is something very wrong about wanting to kill people to do it.
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