First of three parts
Jenny Rogers wrote the following article for Nature Conservancy Magazine.
“As floods throughout the Mississippi River Basin become more destructive and unpredictable, communities are changing tactics to give the water a place to go. Most years, the option on the table would be unthinkable: Some farmers would permanently stop working their lands, ceding them to a nearby river. But in November 2019, at a meeting of Missouri state officials, farmers groups, local officials, and residents, of a badly-flooded community, the farmers were advocates for the idea. Riverside farming had become risky business on their low-lying properties. If they couldn’t control the river that kept inundating their community, maybe they could give the river more room to spread out and slow down during future floods.
“We need something so we aren’t doing this every year,” Ryan Ottmann, a farmer and the president of the Atchison County Levee District, told the group.
Reimagining America’s River
“The Mississippi is the meeting point of 7,000 rivers, creeks, and streams, flowing through 31 states. For generations, these waters have defined landscapes and shaped cultures. But climate change is driving unprecedented floods and forcing many to rethink how they live with the river.
“In the northwestern corner of Missouri, Atchison County is home to 5,100 residents. Its county seat, Rock Port, claims to be the first U.S. town to rely entirely on wind power. Approximately 400 farms, most family-run, grow soybeans, corn and hay on lands near the Missouri River, which snakes along Atchison on its way to join the Mississippi just north of St. Louis. Much of the River is lined with levees that keep the water out of the fields and communities alongside it.
“But on March 14, 2019, a dam on an upstream river collapsed. Three days later, the Missouri River started breaching two major levee systems in Atchison County. More floods and breaches followed, and the River surpassed its banks for months: A county emergency manager called the floods ‘never-ending.’ In Atchison, 166 homes flooded, and 278 residents were forced to evacuate. All told, 56,000 acres of land were submerged—some until December 2019. The area lost an estimated $25 million in agricultural revenue, as water and debris destroyed crops, damaged lands, and washed soil down River.
“What happened in Atchison County was just a microcosm of what happened across the Midwest and parts of the South that year. The 2019 Spring floods broke records in many parts of the Mississippi River basin—a vast swath of land stretching across 31 states and into Canada. River levels peaked at record highs in 75 locations in the Missouri River basin, and constant high water weakened levees until they collapsed. And in one Louisiana town, water seeped under a levee and wiped out a water-treatment facility. In Nebraska, an Air Force base flooded. The federal government later estimated the floods along the Mississippi caused $20 billion in damages. At least 14 people died.
“Historically, the Mississippi and the major rivers that flow into it, the Missouri, the Ohio, the Arkansas and others, would have flooded seasonally into the lands that abut the rivers. Known as floodplains, these low-lying areas would have absorbed some of those floodwaters and spared those living downstream. But for more than 300 years, towns, farms, military bases, and homes, have been built on these lands. Communities have constructed levees along the riverbanks to protect themselves from floodwaters. Those levees constrict the river and push more water downstream, creating higher and higher water levels. As rains have become more extreme because of climate change, many communities are stuck in a pattern of flooding and rebuilding.”
Continued at https://thevoice.us/levees-dams-make-mississippi-river-a-true-highway/