[HN Gopher] The Controversial Plan to Unleash the Mississippi
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The Controversial Plan to Unleash the Mississippi
Author : samclemens
Score : 94 points
Date : 2022-08-13 14:22 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hakaimagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hakaimagazine.com)
| BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 wrote:
| River deltas evolve in ways that have no regard for real estate
| values.
|
| Sediment builds up and constricts outflow until water finds
| another way through.
|
| Levees and channelisation redirect sediment.
| brnt wrote:
| > River deltas evolve in ways that have no regard for real
| estate values.
|
| Yes and no. See the Netherlands. You need to configure an
| entire nation for it though, and I don't think any other
| country can/is.
| vidanay wrote:
| And within 50 years or less with no maintenance, all of those
| areas would be reclaimed.
| [deleted]
| rapnie wrote:
| In Netherlands we have a new problem now to fix. There's a
| very efficient system of dikes, levies and pumps (large parts
| of the country are below sea level) to get rid of the water
| from the river Rhine and big rainfalls. But in recent years
| drought has become a big issue, and now we have to
| significantly alter this system so it is also able to retain
| water when necessary.
|
| This Wikipedia page has a map that shows how the country
| would look like without dikes. Amsterdam for instance would
| be fully flooded: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_control
| _in_the_Netherlan...
|
| Referenced from this page is also the "Room for the River"
| project where indefensible lands are given up, and many
| places have been created where the river is allowed to flood
| its banks, so it becomes more manageable elsewhere: https://e
| n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_for_the_River_(Netherland...
| balentio wrote:
| Man interferes with Natural Course of River via engineering.
| Decides this was a bad idea. Solution? More engineering.
|
| The West screws with water ways and goes dry. Solution? Screw
| with the Mississippi to send water out there where they screwed
| with water.
| ziddoap wrote:
| While the context is wildly different, this type of incremental
| band-aid fixes of _< insert thing>_ always reminds me of the
| 2004 movie The Butterfly Effect. The cycle of trying to fix
| something, making it worse (or other unintended/bad side
| effects appearing), try to fix the fix, repeat ad nauseum until
| everything breaks. I know there's a million (probably better)
| depictions of this pattern, but something about the bathtub
| scene in that movie will forever haunt me.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| You just described half the software development jobs I've
| had.
| njarboe wrote:
| This is how life was evolved. How you exist. 4 billion years
| of band-aid fixes, dead ends, cycle after cycle of living,
| trying, reproducing and dying. Beautiful, amazing, tragic,
| and full of terror. It's how the world works. Humans are just
| part of it.
| majormajor wrote:
| Someone gets seriously injured. Has surgery, lives! Years
| later has complications. Needs more extensive treatment.
| Lives! Years later later has even more complications, dies.
|
| Is the moral of that story "never interfere" to you?
|
| Nothing lasts forever. Maintenance is needed.
|
| [edit to add timeline, per response comment]
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Someone gets seriously injured. Has surgery, lives! Later
| has complications. Needs more extensive treatment. Lives!
| Later later has even more complications, dies.
|
| > Is the moral of that story "never interfere" to you?
|
| That is the moral most doctors tend to take from it, yes.
|
| You want to consider what you're gaining from the first
| surgery. If you're 20 years old, steps two and three are
| unlikely to occur (not in any way related to the initial
| surgery), and you're gaining a lot. If you're 80 years old
| and in poor health, you just described a way of making your
| own life worse while pissing away most of your savings.
| kelnos wrote:
| There's a lot of middle ground, though.
|
| If you're 45 years old, and that surgery extends and
| improves your quality of life until you're 60 or 65, and
| then you need more surgery to keep things going for
| another 15-20 years, that's probably worth it, no?
|
| Sure, there are plenty of cases where post-surgery life
| may not be worth it (but then that's entirely in the eyes
| of the beholder to decide), but that's not all there is.
| majormajor wrote:
| I intended to imply there were years in between those
| incidents, apologies, I realize it wasn't clear.
| ziddoap wrote:
| I wasn't trying to state a moral.
|
| Just reminded of an older movie with a similar theme as
| parent comment, and thought I'd make a comment about it.
| That alright?
| pixl97 wrote:
| Someone finds a marginal place to live, very few people
| live there. Improves the land somewhat. Later had
| complications and needs more treatment to ensure it's safe
| to live there. Dam breaks, a million people die.
|
| Moral of the story, "Oops, this particular set of choices
| was a terrible idea, maybe we don't do that again".
| majormajor wrote:
| "By a waterway" isn't a marginal place to live,
| historically. It comes with risk, but avoids a more
| immediate "oh shit there's no water here" risk.
|
| But more generally, this sort of "just don't be stupid"
| mindset assumes a static world. How many places would we
| be able to pick if we wanted to avoid any possibility of
| hundred year disasters? Five-hundred-year disasters?
| Thousand-year disasters? And when it comes to decisions
| made hundreds of years ago, how would you unwind those so
| simply? Just up and move millions of people from a major
| city? Is that better than trying to mitigate risk?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > "By a waterway" isn't a marginal place to live,
| historically.
|
| Exactly; living by the water has always been the best
| choice. The water doesn't even need to be drinkable.
|
| GP's style of argument misses the important point that
| avoiding injuries is _not a goal_. The tribe that settles
| by the river and grows to a population of five million,
| but experiences flood-related losses of a million people
| once a decade or so, is better off than the tribe that
| stays in the desert and grows to a population of fifty.
|
| _Over time, as the bottom of the channel gradually rose,
| the river overflowed its banks. Dikes were built ever
| higher to prevent flooding, and in some places the river
| started to flow above the surrounding countryside. Today,
| in a stretch of about 1,100 miles, the Yellow River moves
| along 11 yards above the plain. But dikes do not control
| silting, and floods continue to occur on an ever larger
| scale. On more than 1,500 occasions during the [roughly
| 2100-year] history of imperial China the Yellow River
| burst its dikes, destroying farmland, killing villagers,
| and earning its description as "China's sorrow"._
|
| ( _The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han_ ,
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674057341/ )
|
| Saying you shouldn't live near the river because it
| occasionally drowns everyone nearby is saying you
| shouldn't own stocks because sometimes they go down. It's
| an argument that is completely insane.
| kibwen wrote:
| New Orleans isn't marginal, though. Without exaggeration,
| that stretch of coastline is probably the most important
| collection of ports in the western hemisphere.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > Man interferes with Natural Course of River via engineering.
| Decides this was a bad idea. Solution? More engineering.
|
| Wow, an ad hominem attack on engineering? That's a very special
| take to have on a site calles HACKER news!
|
| Would you prefer we'd suffer nature and never attempt anything?
| That's not very hackish :)
|
| Whether we like it or not, the Mississippi is sending a lot of
| clearwater down the gulf of Mexico, water that is needed
| elsewhere. The plan makes sense- and not just for the most
| visible parts like the Hoover dam.
|
| Nothing is without risk: the risk of doing nothing may be more
| to your liking, but there will also be consequences, and some
| people will suffer. Of course, by doing nothing you may try to
| avoid personal blame - but it's akin to a trolley problem, and
| inaction can be morally guilty if you believe in
| utilitarianism.
|
| IMHO the most important thing to do is to honestly study all
| the alternatives (including inaction) then choosing the one
| that makes the more sense - yes, even if it's action, and even
| if there may be some prejudice against engineering, or a bad
| precedent (that can and should be taken into account in the
| honest study)
| sakopov wrote:
| > IMHO the most important thing to do is to honestly study
| all the alternatives
|
| Like not farming in deserts? It's ironic to me that
| progressive states like California refuse to change their
| incoherent farming practices that have obliterated their
| water supply yet they're totally open to diverting rivers all
| over the country outside of California. I think this is what
| OP was eluding to. The water crisis doesn't need engineering.
| It needs a change in mentality first and foremost.
| balentio wrote:
| If I had any gold doubloons, I'd give you one for this
| answer.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| These arid Californian climates are very good for
| agriculture, that's why we need massive geoengineering
| projects to redirect rivers thousands of miles away to make
| it work.
|
| _*scratches head*_
| deanCommie wrote:
| I don't even know where to begin.
|
| First, all of humanity has screwed with waterways for our
| entire existence. The West, The East, The North, The South.
| Hell, Beavers do it. But the earliest human civilization was
| borne on rivers, and grew out of screwing with water ways. For
| irrigation, for navigation.
|
| Every major river in the world that hosts civilization has been
| MASSIVELY screwed with for that civilization's survival -
| consistency and predictability is important for us to not DIE,
| never mind, thrive. That means managing seasonal flooding. That
| means maintaining a navigatable depth for shipping. That means
| (eventually, once we woke up) controlling waste flow and
| filtration, etc.
|
| The Mississippi supports tens of millions of people and tens of
| billions of dollars of economic activity. OF COURSE, humanity
| was going to make it reliable. There were externalities. Now
| they're going to deal with those EXACTLY the same way as they
| did before - yes - with more engineering.
|
| "Man decides to cure disease with medicine. The medicine
| doesn't work. Solution? More medicine! Lunacy!"
|
| Well, yes, but DIFFERENT medicine. Just cuz they're both
| medicine (engineering) doesn't mean that this medicine
| (adjusting levee routing) is the same as this other medicine
| (originally having built the levees in the first place.
| roywiggins wrote:
| The cost of throwing up our hands and allowing the Mississippi
| to revert to its natural course would probably be in the
| trillions of dollars.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| Agree.
|
| However, I remember being in Landscape Architecture in
| college and one of my professors was from Colorado and took
| every opportunity to go after the US Army Corps of Engineers
| and repeatedly related their failures as a case study in what
| not to do.
|
| Ironically, a few later in 2005 (while I still in college)
| Hurricane Katrina blew through all of the US ACOE flood
| protections. Their plans failed catastrophically with levee
| breaches in over 50 places.
|
| So yeah, we shouldn't throw our hands up, but the US ACOE
| doesn't have a great track record for making issues like this
| better.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _but the US ACOE doesn 't have a great track record for
| making issues like this better_
|
| Neither does anyone else.
|
| When I survey the landscape for organizations with the
| experience and equipment to solve water problems in the US,
| ACOE is right at the top of the list. What organizations do
| you feel are better suited to these tasks up and down the
| Mississippi? Of out west in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New
| Mexico? Or down in Georgia-Florida? And so on.
|
| These are all diverse and complex engineering challenges
| that impact wide geographic areas. Failure is to be
| expected. It's one of the maintenance conditions on
| infrastructure.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| The only truly viable solution is a managed transition over
| the course of 50 years or more. We will fight that
| inevitability for as long as possible, and God help us if the
| ORCS fails.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| The idea that manipulating river flow is the reason for the
| current drought conditions is ridiculous.
| mwexler wrote:
| Thanks to OP for sharing. I'd not heard of this source before and
| would never have found it on my own.
| kiliantics wrote:
| I think I first came across Hakai through a HN post. It's
| pretty niche but, in my opinion, it's an example of the kind of
| quality I wish more of our modern media had and what we should
| really be demanding in our news outlets.
| jwarden wrote:
| Mark Twain wrote a lot about the Army Corps of Engineering's work
| on the Mississippi, as well as many other wonderful facts about
| this river and his experience as a steam boat pilot, in _Life on
| the Mississippi_ , a uniquely informative and entertaining book.
| [deleted]
| Geonode wrote:
| Just moved to Baton Rouge. A few drops of rain and this whole
| town starts to pool. Very interesting region.
| cmpb wrote:
| We do get a lot of rain and there are a lot of low areas. It
| was mostly "bottomland" before the woods were cleared out. Back
| in 2016, it basically rained for 15 straight days and flooded
| huge portions of north and east Baton Rouge. The past couple of
| weeks (start of August) have also been relatively wet, so
| that's likely why you're seeing excess water right now.
| Geonode wrote:
| I love it, and I'm loving Baton Rouge.
| excitom wrote:
| It's interesting to venture close to the levee and note fresh
| water springs bubbling up from the pressure of the river flow.
| Then you realize you are standing below the surface of the
| river, which is reinforced by seeing large ocean going ships
| sail by above you.
| smm11 wrote:
| Buffalo Commons, man.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Anyone interested in a long read about the Corps' work directing
| the flow of the Mississippi would do well to look at John
| McPhee's "Atchafalaya:"
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1987/02/23/atchafalaya
| syntheticnature wrote:
| Also a more-recent three-part blog series at Wunderground:
| https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Americas-Achilles-Heel-Mis...
|
| Edit: I recommend reading both.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Thanks for this. The photos really round out the story.
|
| >The head of the Army Corps' flood fight efforts, Major
| General Charles C. Noble, gave the order to open the Morganza
| Floodway two days later to relieve pressure on the Low Sill
| Structure. The governor of Louisiana telephoned and asked if
| he had the authority to order that the Morganza Floodway not
| be opened. General Noble told him no. When complaints arose
| that he was not giving the promised five days' notice, he
| replied that the river didn't give him five days' notice.
| SamBam wrote:
| That's really interesting. It had not occurred to me that hemming
| a river in by building levees would lead to a net loss of land, I
| would have naively guessed it was the other way round. But I can
| see how the loss of silt to the ocean would cause that.
| m-watson wrote:
| There is a good book that goes into some of the history and
| context around the river and how we got to this point.
|
| Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It
| Changed America
|
| By: John M. Barry
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