Apply Now!

Can we Control Nature?

OntarioVanMan

OntarioVanMan

Retired Expediter
Owner/Operator
Corps feels heat as the river rises | The Argus Leader | argusleader.com
But beyond the near-term emergency is a larger question about the corps management - does nature run the river or man?

The huge dams that are at the center of the flooding drama playing out along the Missouri River are almost 60 years old.

In that time, there have been many critics of the U.S. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which built the dams from 1947 to 1952 and is responsible for running them today. Few, however, have been as persistent and vocal as Michael Frome, a former columnist for Field and Stream magazine.

Frome launched some of the harshest critiques of the corps' management of the Missouri River while writing for the magazine from 1968 to 1974. His opinion about the dams has not softened.

"It was wasteful and wicked and merely put off facing the truth that we have to live with nature and not conquer nature with technology and big spending with money we do not have," said Frome, who also has served as visiting professor and writer at universities in Wisconsin, Vermont, Washington and Idaho.


Epic rainfall in the Missouri's headwater states in May following epic snowfall last winter set the stage for profound flooding. The corps is trying to release the flow gradually enough to allow people along the river time to prevent the worst effects of disaster.
 
layoutshooter

layoutshooter

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
We cannot control the weather. We have, however, found many ways to insure that we INCREASE flooding and flood damage.

Levees, dikes and dams "funnel" in water into a smaller area than it was meant to be in. That moves larger volumes of water down stream until there is just no where left for it to go.

We have built major cites in flood planes. We have drained vast amounts of wet lands that would "soak up" excess water and slow down flooding.

If one has read history man used to look forward to flooding. The slower more natural flood would "recharge" farm lands with beneficial silts that made them more likely to produce. Too many years without these floods and crops would fail.
 
OntarioVanMan

OntarioVanMan

Retired Expediter
Owner/Operator
SIOUX CITY -- For hundreds, thousands of years, the Missouri River flowed as it pleased without resistance.

For most of the years, it meandered lazily within its wide, shallow riverbed, its ever-changing currents periodically rearranging sandbars. Twice a year, it swelled, filled its channels and, at times, spilled over its banks into the broad adjacent flood plain.

Once settlers pushed west, they began efforts to tame the river so as to tap its economic, recreational and aesthetic potential. They built dams, levees and other structures aimed at keeping the river in check so that businesses and homes could be near the river, taking advantage of all it had to offer.

But despite man's best efforts, the Missouri River, as it is demonstrating now, will do whatever it wishes.

"The Missouri River is a large, powerful river, and it's showing its strength this year," said Tim Cowman, director of the University of South Dakota's Missouri River Institute. "No matter how much we try to manage and engineer the Missouri River, there are going to be years the Missouri River has its way with us.


Experts: There's no taming the Mighty Missouri
 
layoutshooter

layoutshooter

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
This is the end result when man tries to work against nature rather than with it. Nature will, sooner or later, always win. That is true no matter where in the world it is. Mankind stands NO chance against nature. Anyone who believes otherwise must be smoking "wacky tabaccy"
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top