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.
Bob Kutz, if you look in the tips and notes thread, I posted several days ago why Minot had record flooding, and that was a much bigger screwup than Ft Peck and Williston.
I do not know why anyone would live near a floodplain it is called a flood plain because it floods.
If you look at the total Missouri River reservoir system capacity graphs for the 2010-2011 winter, you’ll see that the capacity was drawn down at a steady rate to about December 1st, then held level through March. The level the USACE held at was at the bottom of the “annual flood control” zone, their target. This is the basis of their claim that they had “full flood control capacity available” in spring 2011.
However, had they continued the fall drawdown at the same rate through March, they could have opened up about 7 million acre-feet of system capacity and absorbed more of the unexpected snow pack and rainfall that occurred in Montana in May. Probably not all, but some mitigation could have happened. It would have required drawing down all the big reservoirs about 10 feet lower than the “annual flood control” zone levels, but still plenty for other purposes.
Up to late April, everything was looking rosy for managing the Missouri. Snowpack was right at normal levels and normally stops increasing at the end of April. However, in May the snowpack continued to grow and went from near normal in April to about 140% of normal in mid-May. Plus a very large rain event happened in eastern Montana in May. These two things put way more water into the system than could be stored.
The Corps appears to manage the river by dealing with the middle 60-80 percentiles (their projections typically use either 80/20 or 90/10 percentiles as their bounds). When they get caught by extreme events, bad things happen. I don’t think they manage the high-side risk as well as the low-side risk. Low-side risk hurts recreation interests and barge navigation. High-side risk wrecks cities. Hopefully the Corps will reevaluate their master manual and place greater emphasis on managing the water for high-side risks, leaving the rest of the considerations secondary.
The Corps also does not appear to use seasonal forecasts in their winter system management plans. The final 2011 plan (released mid-December 2010) used only seasonal averages even though the Climate Prediction Center was predicting above-average precip in many parts of the basin for late winter and spring 2011.
@Nic, Building on a floodplain is a calculated risk. The USGS provides flood maps indicating areas that are likely to be flooded and the estimated frequency of that flooding. This is used primarily for zoning and insurance purposes.
Building in a 100 year flood area is a risk, but if there is flood control engineered for a 100 year flood in place there is a reasonable expectation that there is some protection. If a 1000 year flood comes that is greater than what the controls were engineered for, then all bets are off. The “discussion” here is whether or not existing flood controls were managed appropriately to protect those who had a reasonable expectation of protection. I am sure that everything will get figured out, eventually, but there is probably not enough information to say definitively, one way or another, right now.
There are few building sites without some sort of risk involved, whether it be flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, subsidence, mudslides, avalanches, rockfalls, wild/forest fires, tidal waves/tsunamis, volcanoes, etc..
DesertYote, you really need to quit jumping to conclusions. I honestly don’t understand how you got from my comments to “buy[ing] the propaganda of lefties trying to cover their butts and play the blame Bush game.” The simple fact is that the American Thinker article triggered my BS detector, just like a lot of lefty crap does, and I thought it worth noting that the said article appears to have some accuracy problems.
You see, I’m a true skeptic, or at least I try to be — I don’t accept any claim without evidence, whether it’s one I agree with or not. And I hate it when somebody on my side of an issue uses false or inaccurate arguments. If you have the truth on your side, you shouldn’t need to resort to falsehoods or fallacies.
The graphs that Mark C refers to are interesting. The main page for the northwest division of the Corps of Engineers is here:
http://www.nwd-mr.usace.army.mil/rcc/index.html
It has historic reservoir levels charts:
http://www.nwd-mr.usace.army.mil/rcc/reports/pdfs/MainstemElevationsStorages-15%20years.pdf
and discharge data for this year:
http://www.nwd-mr.usace.army.mil/rcc/reports/qmeasurements2011.html
Oddly, the discharge data is for the Missouri below the Dakotas, while the level data is for upper reservoirs only, so picture is not really clear. Still, the gist seems to be that levels in January were near the base of the “annual flood control and multiple use zone,” or near the bottom of the target zone. Levels then shot up in February and March, generally popping out the top of the target zone. (The data only goes through the end of March.) As for snowpack, levels had been above the 30 year average all winter, and by the end of March were well above average:
http://www.nwd-mr.usace.army.mil/rcc/reports/snow.pdf
This suggests water managers should have been trying to get back down to the lower end of the flood control target level, but release rates, while elevating substantially, remained far below capacity, meaning releases were far from aggressive. Maybe upriver things were different. That is the missing data. But it looks like an awfully pokey response to a surging threat.
I will say though, that the Pierre water manager’s claim of a less than normal draw down does seem to lack historical perspective. Yes, levels were much higher than anything seen in 10 years, but the previous 10 years were not normal. From a historical perspective, it is not the situation in early February that is alarming, but what happens in February and March. The reservoirs were filling up while snowpack was surging (especially in March), without an aggressive response.
they are continuing to build in the floodplain here in Sacramento(Natomas) because the city and/or county wants the increased tax revenues of the improved land….if there’s a 100 year flood they will be under 20-25 feet of water….and the last i heard they are not required to buy flood insurance so looks like the taxpayer will be on the hook…
Alec,
Sorry for not being able to post the links (had to run yesterday afternoon).
Here is the 2010-2011 annual operating plan, developed in fall 2010 and finalized in December:
http://www.nwd-mr.usace.army.mil/rcc/reports/pdfs/finalAOP2010-2011.pdf
Here is the spring 2011 update:
http://www.nwd-mr.usace.army.mil/rcc/reports/pdfs/Spring2011MtgPres.pdf
Page 18 is the key graphic. If they had continued the fall 2010 slope to around March, system capacity would have been at 50-51 MAF rather than 57.
I don’t think there was anything significant that could have been done after late April to mitigate the May events. The decision to hold at 57 MAF through the winter, keeping the reservoirs too full to handle a >95th percentile runoff event, set the stage for the June flood.
I’m the author of the original piece in American Thinker, and thought I should clarify a few points in the interest of adding value to your already robust and well-considered discussion. Regarding wolfwalkers’ assertion that my characterization of the Missouri River Recovery Implementation Committee is incorrect, I would urge him to look deeper than the nameplates attached to the membership slots, at the actual backgrounds of the individuals who fill those slots. The tribal interests are very closely aligned with the environmentalist agenda.
The government agencies represented have filled their slots with a slate of assorted academics with purely environmental backgrounds in both education and experience. One of the seats for a water quality specialist is filled by an individual whose training and expertise lies in water quality for endangered species, not humans. The only members I could find that did not have either direct ties or clear sympathy toward the “river recovery” agenda were two farmers and a couple of hydropower reps.
Regarding the Corps stated position that everything was fine until those pesky spring rains simply is not supported by their own numbers. According to Jody Farhat of the Corps headquarters for the Missouri River mainstem dam system in Omaha, before the above referenced rains, they were looking at dealing with a 44-50 MAF (million acre feet) year, which she stated would have been easily handled at a release rate of 50-60K cubic feet per second.(cfs)
The above referenced rainfall amounted to approximately 4-5 MAF according to Farhat. Are we to assume that the additional 4-5 MAF is responsible for the need to increase flow rates by more than 100kcfs? The narrative the Corps is selling is not supported by their own data. I’m not making a blanket accusation. I am however calling for an in depth investigation in order to discover the reality behind the farce. It is imperative that this begin immediately, just in case the Corps and their supervisors above, have their document shredders operating just as fast as their floodgates.
joe H
did you check to see if Jody Farhat is of Sioux, Assiniboine or Blackfoot descent.
C
The Corps said that they knew in April they were facing a flooding problem. Coincidentally, this is when the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant was shut down for “refueling”. Only a few days ago did the NRC say that flooding was one of the reasons for the shutdown. Not until May did the Corps start seriously increasing the amount of water released. I don’t know how all those dots are supposed to be connected, but I know we haven’t been getting the straight story from officials.