Guest post by Alec Rawls
That’s the eye-popping thesis suggested by Joe Herring at American Thinker, and his prima facie evidence, while thin, is also hard to get around. The key fact is this:
On February 3, 2011, a series of e-mails from Ft. Pierre SD Director of Public Works Brad Lawrence sounded the alarm loud and clear. In correspondence to the headquarters of the American Water Works Association in Washington, D.C., Lawrence warned that “the Corps of Engineers has failed thus far to evacuate enough water from the main stem reservoirs to meet normal runoff conditions. This year’s runoff will be anything but normal.”
For the why, Herring quotes the Corps’ Master Water Control Manual:
Releases at higher-than-normal rates early in the season that cannot be supported by runoff forecasting techniques is inconsistent with all System purposes other than flood control. All of the other authorized purposes depend upon the accumulation of water in the System rather than the availability of vacant storage space. [Emphasis added.]
Originally, these other purposes were water supply, river navigation and recreation, none of which are served by failing to leave enough reservoir space for normal runoff in a high runoff year. But through thirty years of environmentalist domination of the federal bureaucracy, additional purposes have gained ever higher priority. The Missouri River should be “natural”:
The Clinton administration threw its support behind the change, officially shifting the priorities of the Missouri River dam system from flood control, facilitation of commercial traffic, and recreation to habitat restoration, wetlands preservation, and culturally sensitive and sustainable biodiversity.
Herring even quotes a Corps biologist celebrating the current flood:
The former function of the river is being restored in this one-year event. In the short term, it could be detrimental, but in the long term it could be very beneficial.”
Sherlock Holmes’ method of exclusion
The direct evidence here is merely suggestive. “Habitat restoration” is a high priority goal and there is a bit of overt cheerleading for flooding. Far from conclusive, but how else to explain not vacating even a normal amount of reservoir space in a peak snowpack year?
Climate contrarians know to be wary of argument by the principle of exclusion. That’s what the CO2 alarmists do. Eyes wide shut to extensive evidence that 20th century warming was caused by an 80 year grand maximum of solar-magnetic activity, they claim warming has to be due to CO2 because every other possible explanation has been ruled out.
But in The Case of the Waterlogged Corps(e), Sherlock’s method of exclusion is reasonable. The usual problem of failing to identify all the possibilities doesn’t apply because the list of agency objectives is specified. Of these, “habitat restoration” is the only one that is served by the Corps’ actions.
The other possibility is that these government functionaries failed to notice that they had not vacated even the usual amount of space from their reservoirs, but low as expectations are for government work, this isn’t really plausible. Such a mistake would have to be motivated, and as Herring points out, we know these people’s motivations. Almost to a man they are eco-leftists, and we know the eco-leftist position on rivers.
It isn’t the dot-connecting that is outlandish, it is the dots. People who expressly want to see floodplains returned to their natural state followed policies that guaranteed massive flooding. Herring is right: this calls for investigation.
Rational environmentalism
To the extent that risk of flooding can be lowered by flood-control infrastructure, the extra building on floodplains that this risk-reduction encourages is perfectly rational. What induces irrational building on flood plains is the federal government’s longstanding policy of providing subsidized or implicit flood insurance.
After major flooding the government is prone to declare a disaster area. Even if the flood victims are not made whole, their losses are substantially mitigated, reducing the natural disincentive to build in flood zones. Get rid of this market interference and flood damages would be much diminished. In particular, flood plains would end up relegated mainly to agricultural uses that can weather occasional flooding with limited damage.
Seasonal flooding can actually be good for farmland so there is room for a win-win solution where flood control systems are set up to inundate large agricultural bottom lands as necessary to provide room for floodwaters. Instead of farmland on the outside of our riparian cities, substantial amounts of the best farmland would be on the inside of these cities. We see some of this now, but it would go much further if the government limited itself to infrastructure and did not interfere in markets. Safer for people, better for farming, better for migratory birds and the environment, and better for taxpayers.
Not easy to get there, after people have been building on the strength of government promises of relief for many decades, but it is a solution that is rational both economically and environmentally. Unfortunately, this is not what the eco-freaks want.
Instead of “natural” in the market-driven or liberty-driven sense, they embrace a sans-human naturalism, and it looks like the administrators of our flood-control infrastructure are in this camp. They have been hostile to flood-control infrastructure per se since the Clinton era, which is the only obvious explanation for why this infrastructure has been so completely misused.
Flood plains always look so tempting to build on. In the UK the building on flood plains was done because there didn’t seem to be any flooding anymore, and of course the ‘experts’ were predicting a future of hot weather and little rain. Where better to build the houses needed to cope with our last administration’s policy of unfettered immigration? Now that flooding has returned, the plains either flood again or, if flood-protection had been provided, somewhere else along the river course floods. Where a river has lost its shock absorbing mechanism it can result in flash floods through coastal towns.
How High’s the Water Mama?
Not the first time we’ve had large scale flooding. So, in the past sensible people created a plan for flood control. Are our memories so short that now we have forgotten what nature can do?
The scale of the 1937 flood was so unprecedented that civic and industrial groups lobbied national authorities to create a comprehensive plan for flood control. The plan involved creating more than seventy storage reservoirs to reduce Ohio River flood heights. Not fully completed by the Army Corps of Engineers until the early 1940s, the new facilities have drastically reduced flood damages since.
In the 1930s, the Tennessee Valley Authority sought to create a continuous minimum 9-foot (2.7 m) channel along the entirety of the Tennessee River from Paducah to Knoxville. The Authority also sought to help control flooding on the lower Mississippi River, especially in the aftermath of the Ohio River flood of 1937, as research had shown that 4% of the water in the lower Mississippi River originates in the Tennessee River watershed. TVA surveyed the lower part of the river and considered the Aurora Landing site, but eventually settled on the present site at river mile 22.4. The Kentucky Dam project was authorized on May 23, 1938, and construction began July 1, 1938. [6]
Much of the work of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the Tennessee River basin was strongly supported by the majority of the citizens in western Kentucky and their representatives in the United States Congress. U.S.Sen. Alben W. Barkley of Paducah and U.S. Rep. William Gregory from Mayfield and his brother U.S. Rep. Noble Gregory from Mayfield who succeeded him in office strongly supported the funding of TVA and its role in addressing flood control, soil conservation, family relocation, recreation, production of electricity, and economic development.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_River_flood_of_1937
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Flood_of_1936
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mississippi_Flood_of_1927
Having worked closely with COE and Reclamation in the federal Gov’t. as an engineer for 25 years I share the frustrations of rational people. Unfortunately if any thing positive comes out of any goverment action where real estate values or big $ or political power are at stake is a surprise bonus. Look up the history of Addicks Barker flood control project in Housto, Tx.– good thoughts about control of floodplain development from congress in early 30’s but good thoughts gradually faded from the plan as funding was approved, You can find the same process as channel projects transfer flooding to “land” further down stream. National Flood Insurance Program made sure Gov’t. could spread the cost around and promote MORE flood plain development.
rbateman says:
June 26, 2011 at 12:49 am
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That is the fight we are getting ready for once they finally get the Wallow fire in N.E. Arizona put out. The environmentalists created the conditions for this massive burn and if we can go in a harvest fallen trees then we will be right back to the same conditions in a year or two.
Don’t know where you’ve been the last 30 years wolfwalker, but here in the PNW the tribes and the environmentalists are the same people, always turning up on the same side in the courts and using the same lawyers to sue their way to the same goals.
Same goes for many of the sport fishing groups. And if you think that the coast guard is any better than the ACE when it comes to the influence of internal environmentalists, you are blind.
Many hydro facilities are limited in spill rate by court order.
I know Grand Coulee is.
Grid priority is Windmills, then hydro unless hydro is at maximum legal spill.
This is second year that hydro operators have had to balance heavy runoff , the maximum spill regulations and avoiding windmills curtailment.
Last years runoff event was relatively brief. This years heavy runoff event has been prolonged.
Hydro operators have been turned into circus jugglers by judicial fiat.
It’s not surprising they dropped one of the balls.
IF, and I say IF this is true, and was deliberately done to flood out the farms (a century and older) and towns (likewise) along the Missouri River, and in time, the Mississippi (wait til this hits New Orleans), then it would qualify as an act of war by the administration against the heartland States who don’t typically vote for the Party in power.
Has any administration had so many environmental disasters that can be leveraged towards harming America and Americans?
This article replaces one unproven theory for another in terms of cause. It is the opposite view but on the same side of the fence. That side has no mechanism and no maths to prove it’s CO2 or the Sun wut dun it. Bad debate form. It makes the rest of the post as suspect and ignorable as the AGW advocate post.
Prior to the TARP act, I believed our government was run by morons who did dumb things out of gross incompetence. The TARP act convinced me the government is run by criminals for the benefit of special interests.
As to the flood plain issue, General Grant reported all kinds of flood problems as he searched for the enemy. There is nothing new to report here. What we think is skull duggary…ain’t.
Mother nature does not care one iota for dams, flood plains, or corp of engineer board meetings. She will have her way come hell or high water. She appears to be using both with a fair amount of regularity, depending on the geographic area.
This has more of a stench of someone possibly screwing up than it does activist policy. Every year the USACE lowers the levels of Lakes Barkley and Kentucky in anticipation of the Spring flood season. This year was no different. I was personally on Lake Barkley last Oct. Our boat grounded a couple of times due to low water. They held back the waters of both lakes this spring at the right time for as long as possible and bought an extra couple day’s time for the people along the Ohio to clear out and sandbag. I have a new appreciation of the work done by USACE.
I’m not as familiar with the situation on the Missouri, but I do remember reading or watching a story years ago about how they were starting to use the system to mimic the natural spring surges, so I tend to suspect that the USACE bag of tricks just got overwhelmed Before they could prepare due to so much water already in the system from all the rain throughout the entire Midwest, and possibly not anticipating this early enough. Management of the entire Mississippi flood plain must be quite a complex matter. Perhaps it was too late by the time they realized they needed to lower the upper Mo. River reservoirs?
I think a good question to ask is, knowing what the effect of a strong La Nina would have on rainfall patterns in the Midwest, what guidance was given by NOAA to the USACE and when with regard to preparation for late 2010/early 2011 precipitation?
Let me get my tinfoil hat on straight…
It would also be appealing to the environmentalist mindset to do as much economic damage and disrupt as much commercial and industrial activity in North Dakota as possible, in order to disrupt/punish the new oil production operations there.
Now I’ll put my tinfoil hat away.
In re ‘Wolfwalker at 4:52 am’ Cadillac Desert is a great book and brings
out the different aims of the Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of
Reclamation which are both government agencies receiving taxpayer
funds and who LOBBY Congress. It is ridiculous that this isn’t allowed.
When floods wipe you out, you have no one to blame but yourself. You decided to live there.
http://www.champoeg.org/learn-more/1861-willamette-flood.html
http://articles.sfgate.com/keyword/folsom-dam
particularly:
“Plenty of Water Over the Dam / State hopes for slow snowmelt
By Michael McCabe, Chronicle Staff Writer | April 10, 1995
1995-04-10 04:00:00 PST Folsom Dam Sacramento County — With a near-record snowpack in the Sierra state and federal reservoir experts are cautiously optimistic it won’t melt so fast that the flatlands will see a return of the floods. In fact the upside of all that snow strongly outweighs any lingering fear that the state’s dams and reservoirs will not be able to handle it. For a state that has just gone through six years of drought the cool spring that is permitting a leisurely snowmelt is like money in the bank.”
Note the date. Very improtant.
Now this very first article on the page:
“FEATURED ARTICLESNEWS
PAGE ONE (SACRAMENTO) — Gate Breaks at Folsom Dam / Warning to stay off American River
By Yumi Wilson, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau | July 18, 1995
1995-07-18 04:00:00 PST Sacramento — NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE A spill gate at Folsom Dam broke yesterday raising the American River high enough to force the evacuation of the homeless fishermen rafters and other recreationists but posing no threat to nearby homes. As 40000 cubic feet of water per second began pouring out of the filled reservoir at 8 a.m. the National Weather Service issued a flash-flood warning for areas along the American River and police and sheriff’s deputies cleared dozens of people from the river banks and closed nearby roads and parks.”
40000 cfs is close to the limit that the levee system and the bypasses can handle.
They were banking on a slow melt. They are doing the same thing today. The gate failed at Folsom when controllers discovered they could open the gates wider than specifications.
All the North State reservoirs are chock full.
Note the 2nd article to the right. Sen. Feinstein lobbying for levee repairs. Well, did it happen?
No, not enough was done. Swarzenegger tried to. No, the money was gone by then.
Just like the Mississippi, the levees are old and in need of massive repairs.
Now, stir in the ‘It’s natural” seasoning, and it’s every man for himself.
I’ve heard next to nothing about the impact this flooding is having on crop production . The combination of a late , wet spring , severe weather and flooding is bound to have done some serious damage – and not only in the Missouri drainage . I’m thinking that food prices might get pretty ugly this winter . Does anyone out ther have a handle on this ?
Overwhelmed, incompetent managers, or deliberate tinkering? I would choose the first or second over the third normally.
My own dealings with ACE inform me that most of the people there are honest, but these folks don’t advance up the management chain.
The current political bosses are doing a very good job of weeding out those who don’t follow the narrative though (like the Clinton admin did back in the 90s), so the third option does rise somewhat higher in my thinking. I’d still like to see some memos though before I start to point fingers.
The author needs to learn a lot more about water and the West. Casting this is as simply ‘those damn environmentalists running amok’ is assinine.
“Originally, these other purposes were water supply, river navigation and recreation, none of which are served by failing to leave enough reservoir space for normal runoff in a high runoff year.”
Nonsense. Those other purposes are still water supply, river navigation and recreation, among others. And there are still powerful interests behind each of those uses, particularly water supply. We are coming off several years of drought in the upper Missouri watershed, a situation that has only strengtheded the standard incentive among water users to not want resource managers to ‘waste’ water by releasing it from reservoirs before the peak of the hydrograph (to make space for flood control accumulation), or for reasons other than attempting to satisfy our grossly over-allocated water rights infrastructure. Agricultural interest is max fill of the reservoirs, and no water released for anything other than dry season irrigation. Recreation also prefers full reservoirs (people dont like it when their marinas are 1/4 mile from the water), and both river recreation and navigation have incentive to keep water releases to the dry season.
These are huge political issues that have nothing to do with ‘environmentalism’, which has been intentionally and officially discriminated against, to the detriment of other than the entrenched special interests, for the entire history of the West.
The idea that water management was simple and non-conflicted prior to concerns over ‘environmental’ issues is post-normal science political fiction.
Anthony should stick to global warming, and point to the severe conflicts and unintended consequences of our attempt at controlling even a small part of the climate system (regional precipitation run off) as an obvious counter to those idiots that think we should (let alone could) try to control it all (global heat budget) with ‘stop global warming’ schemes.
Bill Illis says:
June 26, 2011 at 5:32 am
“I understood that dam operators were letting the max release rate out all winter and early spring due to the snowpack/runoff forecasts”
Corps winter report and planning.
Gavin’s point dam was releasing 21000 cubic feet per second. Not even close to a maximum release rate.
In the local Omaha World Herald paper the Corp defend their decisions with a series of questions and answers. The big unknown was 8″ rains in a large part of Eastern Montana in May. Usually this heavy of a rain event covers only a small area. In this event it covered a very wide area. If dams had not been built there would have been severe flooding this year. The Corps seems to be limiting the extent of the flooding by prolonging it. Rather than a two week flood period it will go on for months. All anyone can do is hope the levee’s hold and the Nuclear reactors keep their used rods cool.
@Frosty, What you recommend was encouraged by the Dept. of Agriculture after the Dust Bowl and a series of devastating flash floods in the ’20’s and ’30’s. Contour plowing, wind breaks, waterway buffers, etc.. were widely implemented by farmers and ranchers for their own benefit. Unfortunately, farm subsidy programs in the last 30-40 years have encouraged farmers to utilize every square inch of their property for cultivation and these soil conservation works have largely been destroyed, as well as beneficial natural features that had. until recently, been left alone.
There tends to be a distinct difference in the way the Federal gov’t approaches management decisions in the “West” vs. “East.” A lot if it has its foundation in the manner in which land was settled and statehood was applied. There is little Federal land in the “East,” while in the “West,” the Federal gov’t is a major, if not the principle, landholder. What the Feds feel they can get away with politically in Tennessee, New York or Ohio, is different than what they feel they can do in Utah, California or the Dakotas. Living in Utah, I have little hope of influencing what goes on in New York, but a new yorker has little doubt that he/she can influence what happens in Utah (if they care to), because, as a citizen of the US, he/she owns/controls most of it. Historically, those living outside the West who care what happens in the West tend to be conservationists that are easily influenced by radical environmentalists. This leaves those of us who live in the West in the peculiar position of having less to say what happens in the land around us than someone who lives two thousand miles away, which is a bit of a distortion of the law of the commons.
Local governments are not useful tools in controlling things like flood zones, as they are, by their nature, heavily influenced by property owners and developers. As has been mentioned, as long as developers and owners feel that they will always be bailed out by the Feds, they will continue to build in high risk areas like flood plains and ocean beaches. Of course, even without flood insurance and disaster bailouts, some people will still build. It is human nature to take risks.
Pamela wrote:
There will be floods that our flood control systems cannot contain, but the amount of flooding is certainly contingent on how those systems are used. Leaving less than normal reservoir space in a well-above-normal snow year is an obvious recipe for disaster. It was certainly obvious to the Public Works director in Pierre.
Bill Ilis’ observation:
Certainly they had no choice but to hold back water once the Mississippi started flooding in April and May, but Bill seems to be wrong about dam operators releasing at maximum rates all winter. The Pierre water manager’s complaint came in early February. With a large snowpack, he knew they needed to take advantage of their window of opportunity to release water before the river swelled downstream, but it wasn’t happening. Maybe it was not certain that there would be a bottleneck, but it was certainly likely. These peoples’ job it to prepare for such difficulties and they didn’t do it.
JJ notes that balancing flood control with uses that depend on capturing water is a longstanding problem. Yes, obviously, but that does not account for a glaring deviation from established safe practices. Of course argument by exclusion is not very reliable, as I noted, but such an obvious deviation has to be motivated, and traditional water use objectives cannot account for it.
Well, it turns out I did omit one of the dam operator’s objectives: hydroelectric generation. Thanks to Harry for bringing up the new factor of dam operators being required to hold back hydroelectric generation to make room for wind-power when the windmills are in operation. The specific complaint of Pierre’s water manager was about the high level of lake Oahe. The Oahe dam is a major provider of electricity to the north-central U.S. and the Dakotas are the site of substantial new wind farming. Could this account for the deviation from past norms?
If so, wind-hydro effects could also have contributed to the flooding of Minot North Dakota. The main dam on the Souris River is the Canadian Rafferty-Alameda project, which in addition to providing flood control and water supply also supplies water to the Shand Power Station in lower Saskatchewan. The Canadians have also been going whole hog on windfarms, which would have displaced hydro. Were the Canadian dams fuller than usual as a result? Worth looking into.
The implications for wind-farming would be devastating. The water for the hydro that they replace will sometimes NEED to be released, meaning that if it is not used for hydro, it will have to be released without generating any electricity, so that wind generated electricity will at these times have zero value. If in order to avoid that implication they are holding the water in reservoirs when it needs to be released, then the wind farming becomes responsible for the resulting flooding.
wolfwalker
June 26, 2011 at 4:52 am
Why not? Remember, we’re talking about the Army Corps of Engineers, and specifically the Mississippi Valley division — possibly the least competent division of the least competent unit in the whole United States armed forces. If you really still trust the ACE to get water management right, I suggest you read Marc Reisner’s book Cadillac Desert, and follow it with some accounts of the disaster the ACE made of New Orleans’ levee system.
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You fail to realize that the ACE does what they are TOLD to do. Engineering of the Mississippi valley happens to be the most politicized of all their projects. The ACE has been complaining for decades about some of the things they are told to do. Lately it has been eco-nuts and their lefty politician buddies that have been setting the agenda.
Chris D. says:
June 26, 2011 at 9:51 am
…
I think a good question to ask is, knowing what the effect of a strong La Nina would have on rainfall patterns in the Midwest, what guidance was given by NOAA to the USACE and when with regard to preparation for late 2010/early 2011 precipitation?
You can be that guidance was that record snow pack is a thing of the past.
Notice also that this is a twofer for the greens; in addition to the “natural” river, they get to blame the flooding on “climate change”.
I would also blame myself if my wind farm was shut down due to high hydroelectric production. I decided to sink my money into the business. I take the risk.