[HN Gopher] Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade...
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Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks
Author : tomohawk
Score : 112 points
Date : 2022-10-03 14:55 UTC (8 hours ago)
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| status200 wrote:
| It will be interesting to see how food waste statistics are
| influenced by these supply chain and inflation woes, as well as
| our interest in mono-cropping soy and corn.
| bombcar wrote:
| Hmm, the St Croix is low but not lower than historical lows from
| years past:
| https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?gage=stlm5&wf...
|
| (The St Croix is 1% of the total discharge of the Mississippi.)
| InitialLastName wrote:
| It annoys me to no end (in a tiny way) that there are two St
| Croix rivers along borders in the US.
| b06timmer wrote:
| Am in New Orleans and folks are talking about an in-river levee
| to keep the salt water from intruding into the river from the
| Gulf of Mexico, because of the low river levels.
|
| I know there are water restrictions in most of the USA but I
| never thought it would hit the Mississippi river.
| hinkley wrote:
| If you ever have a friend or family member who is trying to get
| around wetland conservation laws, they are contributing to the
| shrinking of our river systems.
|
| Water retention capacity in upper watersheds directly contribute
| to average river flow, which is very easy to show by the behavior
| of streams. Deserts are self-reinforcing systems where the heat
| pushes clouds up or away from them. Wet, cool forests draw in
| more precipitation in. We don't really understand the processes
| yet, but we do know it's not a zero sum game of delaying (or
| 'stealing') water versus total system flow. This is most easily
| demonstrated for watersheds on the windward sides of mountains,
| due to snow pack, but forests and microbes both fiddle around
| with cloud cover in general.
|
| As for restoring watersheds, we systematically removed the
| engineers that created the lush river systems of the US and
| Canada, namely the beaver, which once numbered at somewhere
| between 60 and 300 million animals in North America. We blame
| long term changes in rain patterns for the reduced river flow,
| but I strongly suspect that is the '3 Whys' trap of the Five Whys
| Process.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Your post reminds me of this video:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSctr0aQOso
| hinkley wrote:
| There's a group working in the Columbia River basin, and
| they've seen good results both from just setting beavers
| loose. They've seen positive but lesser results from man-made
| bespoke beaver dams, but of note is that in some cases the
| beavers adopted a man-made dam and completed it, which may
| help smooth the path for reintroduction in places where
| Illusion of Control sufferers paint beavers as anarchists. We
| would prefer the beaver dams be here, here and here, so we
| will try to coax them into doing just that.
|
| Part of my statements above come from their work, and if
| memory serves, they made an off-hand comment in one of their
| reports about wanting to try the same thing in the Colorado.
| The Columbia is in good enough shape that we've removed dams
| to restore salmon spawning grounds. The Colorado is a fucking
| mess, but it's not in 'hippy dippy' states where funding is
| easier to come by.
| Metacelsus wrote:
| And the Supreme Court will probably gut those laws in the near
| future.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _...I strongly suspect that is the '3 Whys' trap of the Five
| Whys Process._
|
| My search-fu fails me. What is this?
| routerl wrote:
| I'm guessing it means "stop asking why before discovering the
| root cause". I.e. the analysis stops at a symptom rather than
| the cause.
| makestuff wrote:
| pretty popular for root cause analysis technique at AWS. They
| published an article on it here https://wa.aws.amazon.com/wel
| larchitected/2020-07-02T19-33-2....
| CharlesW wrote:
| Thanks, I'm a fan of "5 Whys" but had never heard of the "3
| Whys trap".
| hinkley wrote:
| What routerl said. Skipping out on root cause analysis by
| stopping as soon as you find something actionable. Those
| shallow analyses often result in a much bigger cleanup
| project that is also much less effective. Great for empire
| building, not so great for progress.
|
| It just so happens that I usually catch people at this when
| they only have 3 Whys mapped out. There's something going on
| there but I'm not sure I understand the mechanics.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Gotcha, thanks! AFAICT you coined "3 Whys trap", which is a
| great name for it.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| Not only affecting the shrinking of the river systems, but also
| degrading the quality of the water.
|
| I live in Iowa, home of 3.15 million people and 24 million
| pigs. Tile in the fields and a complete lack of buffer between
| fields and streams sends massive amounts of fertilizer into the
| waterways and ultimately down the Mississippi. ~85% of the land
| in the state is dedicated to farming in one way or another, and
| the amount of manure which can be spread per acre is based on
| crop production per acre formulas from the 1970's. Breeding
| work has increased corn yield by about 65%, allowing that much
| more manure to be spread.
|
| I recently found this podcast which talks about water issues
| around the state, produced by University of Iowa professors.
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-all-want-clean-h2o/...
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| >If you ever have a friend or family member who is trying to
| get around wetland conservation laws, they are contributing to
| the shrinking of our river systems.
|
| If you ever read/hear a statement like this you can safely
| ignore it because nobody with any second or even third hand
| exposure to the true vastness of the scope of wetland
| conservation laws would say such a thing.
|
| Somebody's little construction project to replace their 25x30
| cabin on a lake in the woods with one that's 24x32 isn't
| material in this context no matter how hard people may
| dishonestly try to imply otherwise. Furthermore, the
| overwhelming majority of cases of "skirting conservation laws"
| are cases of people who want to do a nearly like for like
| replacement of some existing thing that didn't need permission
| when it was done 40-140yr ago and don't want to pay some guy
| with a license thousands of dollars for the privilege of a
| stamped drawing.
| hinkley wrote:
| You say that like nobody of Hacker News knows anybody who is
| a land developer.
|
| > some existing thing that didn't need permission when it was
| done 40-140yr ago
|
| Not every law ever written has grandfather clauses, and where
| water rights are concerned we are quickly running out of
| patience for grandfather clauses.
|
| > no matter how hard people may dishonestly try to imply
| otherwise
|
| Hey you know what else is dishonest? Making a big
| conversation with wide ranging consequences have to pause to
| talk about one particular line item you have a problem with.
| Agenda or no (which you are projecting on others), the
| results are the same.
|
| Every city is worsening its watershed - through development -
| except for the few that are actively fighting against it. And
| so many families are getting burned out by wildfires because
| we keep increasing the density of cabins out in the woods.
| It's not isolated incidents when you have 5 million or even
| half a million people living in a county all trying to do
| their own thing without The Man trying to stop them.
|
| No single rain drop believes it is responsible for the flood.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > we are quickly running out of patience for grandfather
| clauses.
|
| Who is "we"? Who put you in charge of speaking for
| everyone?
| hinkley wrote:
| Start at the south end of the Colorado for the loudest
| voices, and then work your way north. So that's the
| entire country of Mexico who wonders where their river
| went, and the people upstream who are progressively less
| effected by the reduced flow.
|
| Then add in environmentalists and conservationists. You
| can't preserve wetland plants and animals when there's no
| wetland.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Delta
|
| > The loss of freshwater flows to the delta over the
| twentieth century has reduced delta wetlands to about 5
| percent of their original extent, and non-native species
| have compromised the ecological health of much of what
| remains. Stress on ecosystems has allowed invasive plants
| to out-compete native species along Colorado River
| riparian areas. Native forests of cottonwood and willow
| have yielded to sand and mudflats dominated by the
| nonnative tamarisk (also known as salt cedar), arrow-
| weed, and iodine bush, a transformation that has
| decreased the habitat value of the riparian forest.[7]
| fredrikholm wrote:
| It's painful how widespread this notion of 'nature steals
| precious water' is, and how quickly the practical implications
| of such a mindset leads to further destruction.
|
| The municipality where I live have an annual cycle of doing
| things like: * Scraping away every fallen leaf
| to be burned * Removing all twigs, branches and dead wood
| * Burning or spraying down all weeds * Cutting the grass,
| even in places no one walks * Aggressively cutting down
| bushes
|
| Every year the soil gets drier, compacts and washes away when
| rainfall comes in the spring and turns our parks into giant
| mudslides.
|
| Next year they spend hundreds of thousands trying to replant
| and reseed, only to lose it again in the words of
| 'maintenance'.
|
| Meanwhile, our smaller community decided to do the complete
| opposite: * Faux-compost everything (grass
| cuttings, leaves, twigs, weeds) by literally just throwing it
| into a pile and forgetting about it * Mulch everything
| with said compost * Let (non-invasive) weeds take over
| areas that were previously barren * Not trim down bushes
| before winter
|
| In nearly two seasons now, we've gone from watching a slow
| depressing death of what used to be a wonderful garden before
| the droughts started in ~2018, to a garden that is _even more
| impressive_ and seems to grow stronger every year. We now have
| more birds than ever, as insects have started to bounce back.
|
| We're doing 1/10th of the work as our neighboring communities,
| and we're getting as good if not better results.
|
| I wish more people approached gardening/landscaping with this
| water-harvesting, nature mimicking way. It's cheap, takes
| extremely little resources and demonstrates how incredibly
| strong an ecosystem can be if you just work with it rather than
| against it, even on a small scale.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Not that we, or rather I, mowed our lawn often, at most ince
| every 3-4 weeks or so. This year, we decided to leave part of
| it to grow. The amount of insects in there was astounishing,
| so the patch stayed uncut between June and two weeks ago. The
| rain transfromed it ibto something less than pretty. Turned
| out the grass underneath is prettier than before. Next we
| gonna repeat the same thing with a different patch.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Did this for No-Mow-May. Left some patches unmowed for that
| month (we got a lot of rain in May this year). Lots of
| diversity in those patches. It was kind of hard to mow them
| in June - had to use the weed-eater first. Left a couple of
| the patches longer into July. Neighbor across the street
| almost came unhinged. Tried to explain that it was helping
| polinators... but it was a waste of breath.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Lucky us we don't have of those neighbors, and basically
| cannot get them. No HOAs or similar shenenigans were we
| live, even the city leaves large patches in parks unmowed
| until automn in some places.
| hinkley wrote:
| Here's a fun bit of chemistry I learned some time ago: the
| breakdown of cellulose and lignin produces water as one of
| the byproducts. Which stands to reason since photosynthesis
| consumes a good deal of water in the first place.
|
| Those saprophytic fungi, which enjoy a nice wet environment
| to work in, are producing some of the water they need to
| work. When you burn this material instead, you send all of
| that humidity up the chimney with the rest of the gasses (and
| a little extra from the surroundings due to evaporation from
| the heat).
| bombcar wrote:
| The absolute amount of effort we spend _fighting nature_
| instead of just guiding and living with it is frightening.
| hinkley wrote:
| Illusion of Control. We need group therapy and nobody who
| has successfully accomplished that at such scales has any
| formal training in the subject.
| mc32 wrote:
| If you don't manage it (fight it) you get the buried and
| re-discovered pyramids of southern Mexico (and Cambodia).
| Yes, there is a balance, however, the other extreme is also
| not viable for habitation.
| ericmay wrote:
| Yea but we're so far on the extreme of slash and burn and
| pouring chemicals on lawns that it's not even worth
| considering at this point concerns of habitation. It's
| just not even on the radar in terms of things that we
| need to bother caring about for the foreseeable future
| (100+ years minimum).
| mc32 wrote:
| I agree that we can find better solutions than what lawns
| provide, however, weeds, nature and plants will take over
| an unmanaged property pretty quickly... maybe 20 years.
| In 100 places are near unrecognizable. The abandoned
| areas of Detroit did not take 100 years to become
| overtaken by nature. And that's a continental climate. In
| Tropical climates the rate will be quicker.
| ericmay wrote:
| Sure, but in the context of this discussion unmanaged
| property simply isn't an issue, in my view. It's _too
| much_ management that 's causing problems.
| nightski wrote:
| Pouring chemicals? Maybe a few do but I only apply one
| application of pre-emergent a year and then one
| application of fertilizer in the fall. That's not really
| pouring chemicals. In fact nature seems to thrive in our
| lawn.
| ericmay wrote:
| From my time in the suburbs, people spray weed killer and
| similar chemicals throughout the spring and summer and
| into the fall. Of course each individual is different. We
| never sprayed and just let them grow and mowed them down
| and then pulled them out of flower beds.
|
| You can also verify that these are used extensively by
| looking at the number of products sold for this purpose
| at national hardware retailers.
|
| But this is just one issue among many. Lawns are de facto
| desert areas.
| nightski wrote:
| There are so many products because people are ignorant
| and just want an easy fix. It's pure laziness and has
| nothing to do with having a healthy lawn. There's a lot
| of money in laziness :)
|
| A healthy lawn really doesn't require that much from a
| chemical standpoint, but it take effort to figure out
| what it needs and you have to do things at the right
| time. In fact, the healthier the lawn the less weed
| killers you need because a thick lawn is a poor
| environment for weeds.
|
| Lots of people blanket apply fertilizers too. But in
| reality a quick test of the soil can tell you exactly
| what is out of balance and if you need that fertilizer
| application at all.
| ericmay wrote:
| I definitely agree with you there, but even a healthy
| lawn is still a lawn, which is still a bit of a problem.
| Outside of insects in the ground not much can live there.
| You need a variety of bushes, trees, herbs, flowers, and
| other types of plants to create a healthy ecosystem
| there. A lawn simply can't provide that.
| bluGill wrote:
| Those few though in total mean your city is pouring more
| chemicals on per unit area that farmers who "pour
| chemical" on every acre. Of course farmers are talking
| about thousands of acres and so chemical prices add up,
| while the individual is only talking about 1/10th an acre
| or less, so the costs add up a lot slower. Thus the
| farmer has incentive to put on only what is needed, and
| not let it run away. (not that farmers do a good job
| here, but they are aware of the problem unlike city
| residents)
| bombcar wrote:
| Manage and fight are vastly different - we're getting
| better at this (example: freeways used to have water
| runoff go to the storm sewers and now they go into dry
| holding ponds instead).
| TylerE wrote:
| For all the crap suburbs take for cars, the American lawn
| really is a greater evil.
| hinkley wrote:
| Which suburbs also contain. I don't know which is the more
| sacred cow, the automobile or the lawn. I suspect people
| with an agenda picked one rather than attacking on all
| fronts, alienating a larger group of people.
| tomrod wrote:
| Based on my experience, lawns are the bigger sacred cow.
| Cars get vilified in certain places. Lawns? Just me and
| my friends on /r/nolawns and similar subreddits.
|
| My rare mowing brings rabbits, frogs, insects of all
| kinds. Few mosquitoes, as there are critters that eat
| them. We keep the front trim (short) without seeding but
| the back a bit wild.
|
| My neighbors? They complain sometimes. They are the ones
| who voted out the HOA and we are well in city guidelines,
| so no issues.
| nightski wrote:
| I mow weekly and we have tons of insects, rabbits, and
| frogs. So many so it's a problem. I don't think they are
| very correlated.
| dismalpedigree wrote:
| Voted out the HOA? Tell me more.
| [deleted]
| primroot wrote:
| All the more desperate considering that 1/10th of the work
| may be regarded by many as "not good for the economy".
| fredrikholm wrote:
| We should take those people and make them dig holes in the
| ground, and then fill them up again. Plenty of work, great
| for the economy.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| Did you just invent an imaginary group of baddies, assign
| them an imaginary belief, and then feel concerned because
| they "exist"?
| citilife wrote:
| Current level: 10.52 ft. forecast has it at 7ft by end of
| October.
|
| Record lows:
|
| Low Water Records for Ohio River at Cairo
|
| (1) -1.00 ft on 12/24/1871
|
| (2) 0.30 ft on 12/30/1876
|
| (3) 1.10 ft on 01/01/1877
|
| (4) 2.00 ft on 12/31/1887
|
| (5) 2.50 ft on 10/20/1897
|
| (6) 2.90 ft on 11/21/1901
|
| (7) 4.93 ft on 07/12/1988
|
| (8) 5.80 ft on 12/31/1963
|
| (9) 6.87 ft on 08/28/2006
|
| (10) 7.10 ft on 01/17/1981
|
| (11) 7.15 ft on 08/29/2012
|
| (12) 7.20 ft on 08/08/2005
|
| (13) 8.52 ft on 09/11/2000
|
| (14) 8.72 ft on 09/19/2005
|
| (15) 8.72 ft on 07/25/2012
|
| (16) 9.10 ft on 02/12/2000
|
| (17) 11.33 ft on 06/30/2012
|
| (18) 11.63 ft on 10/16/2006
|
| (19) 13.10 ft on 05/19/2000
|
| https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/water.php?wfo=pah&gage=ciri2
| deathanatos wrote:
| Since I wondered how a river can have a negative depth:
|
| > _A river 's stage at a point (a gauge reading) is not an
| absolute measure of the depth of the water in the channel,
| rather it is a depth with respect to an historical Datum level.
| In summary, when a river gauge reads zero or in the negative
| numbers - it does not mean that the river has gone totally dry
| or is running below ground. It means that the gauge is reading
| at or below the agreed-upon zero level._
|
| > _Silt may deposit in the river channel over time (filling the
| channel up), or the channel bottom may be scoured out to a
| deeper level by strong currents._
|
| > _Still, the gauge zero datum levels are not changed to keep
| continuity._
|
| https://www.weather.gov/ctp/NegativeRiverStages
|
| So, these aren't depth, and apparently aren't even comparable.
| selimnairb wrote:
| And depending on sediment transport dynamics for a particular
| reach of the river, the depth could be higher or lower at a
| given stage (i.e., height above datum) today than at the same
| stage in the past.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| For anyone curious about water levels around their region, the US
| Geological Service monitors water levels in real time across
| thousands of stations. I had a great discussion with a couple
| USGS data scientists at the RStudio conference in July.
|
| Their remote monitoring stations report the data to their servers
| typically in 15 minute intervals.
|
| If you're worried about the water level at a particular location,
| they have a service which allows you to get alerts if it exceeds
| a certain level. They're in the middle of redoing many of their
| online tools, so it's a mix of legacy and modern looking web
| development.
|
| They get their funding from contracts with other federal agencies
| or private businesses, not directly from the government. For
| example, a company may have a permit that they can pull 100,000
| cubic feet of water from a stream per day, but that the stream
| level must not go below 5 feet. USGS would add monitoring after
| the draw point and provide that data to the client (and public)
| at the client's expense.
|
| https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/rt
| bombcar wrote:
| Also if you're interested in the flood level of a river near
| you, put the alerts on the areas _upstream_ as you can often
| get advance warning.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Wasn't it just flooding?
| hinkley wrote:
| Reduction in system capacity simultaneously decreases average
| throughput and decreases the ability to handle peak throughput.
| ravedave5 wrote:
| This article has no details on causes. Minnesota has had a dry
| summer, and the driest September on record. Most streams/rivers
| in central/south MN are low.
| https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/river_levels/index.html
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| However, this is talking about river levels at Cairo, Illinois
| (pronounced "Cay-Roe", BTW) which is on the Ohio River right
| before it dumps into the Mississippi.
|
| The Ohio provides the majority of the water in the lower
| Mississippi, so it is definitely concerning.
| bombcar wrote:
| The flow of the Mississippi after leaving Minnesota is no where
| near the lowest recorded:
| https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=arx&gage=...
|
| Low Water Records for Mississippi River at Lansing
|
| (1) 3.39 ft on 03/13/1938
|
| (2) 4.19 ft on 01/23/1944
|
| (3) 6.09 ft on 11/27/1942
|
| (4) 6.34 ft on 02/04/1943
|
| (5) 6.58 ft on 01/17/1945
|
| (6) 6.76 ft on 08/14/1941
|
| (7) 6.92 ft on 10/28/1940
|
| (8) 6.94 ft on 01/27/1957
|
| Currently at 8ft.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Typo?
|
| Should that read "is _now_ where ", "is _not_ where ", or ...
| ?
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| If you ever have a chance, I highly recommend going near a port
| and watching operations.
|
| I used to live near the Mississippi River in Iowa, and it was
| always impressive to see the barge traffic and think about the
| sheer volume of product moving. South of St. Louis, the barge
| tows can be up to 45 barges.
|
| Visiting Savanah, Georgia and watching the ships come and go was
| also impressive. There's a bridge that was built in 1953,
| replaced in 1991, and is in consideration for replacement again
| because the ships keep getting larger.
|
| I'll also recommend the Containers podcast, an 8 part series
| discussing global trade and why the ships keep getting bigger.
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/containers/id120955917...
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The most impressive of the Panama Canal related expansion works
| was the project by PANYNJ in New York to raise the roadway of
| an existing arch bridge from within, and without interrupting
| traffic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayonne_Bridge
| bombcar wrote:
| This kind of gives the lie to the "The US can't build
| anything anymore" - we do build things but we have all sorts
| of restrictions we wouldn't have operated under a hundred
| years ago.
|
| Back then we would have just built a whole new bridge
| somewhere nearby and then probably detonated the old one.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Nobody says that the US literally cant build anything
| anymore. The sentiment, backed by data, is that it is
| vastly more expensive and slower to build than in the past.
| This makes it hard to justify attempting a project at all.
|
| This analysis [1] shows that building tunnels in the US
| costs 10X more than in Norway, and 3X the average for the
| countries studied. Obviously, this means that with the same
| government budget, you get 10% the infrastructure than a
| country like Norway. However, this also means the return on
| investment needs to be 10X higher to justify starting the
| project at all!
|
| This trend holds true for most types of building projects
| in the US.
|
| https://projectdelivery.enotrans.org/international/
| bluGill wrote:
| Just to make it worse, often the things we are talking
| about are areas where network effects matter so the more
| you build the better the return on investment. Or in our
| case because we can afford to build so little our return
| on investment will be much less than it could be if we
| build more.
| pjot wrote:
| I live in New Orleans along the river - some of the largest
| ships I've seen are branded with "Chiquita" and "Dole". It's
| hilariously fascinating to watch literal tons of bananas gently
| float by.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| If you want an additional layer of humor, read The Fish that
| Ate the Whale. I believe there is still a 'United Fruit'
| building somewhere in New Orleans.
| MooMooMilkParty wrote:
| Related I also gotta recommend "Uncommon Carriers" by John
| McPhee. It's got a chapter that follows a barge operator on the
| Illinois river that's pretty great.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| How can the article not mention that it ebbs and flows? They're
| making it alarmist sounding when it's just the natural state of
| the river.
| hinkley wrote:
| Complex systems tend to fishtail when they're about to
| collapse. Peak output can go up while averages are declining.
| o_1 wrote:
| Thirsty? light a fire, then people come with water.
| selimnairb wrote:
| Probably trying to drum up support for getting money from
| Congress for dredging key sections.
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(page generated 2022-10-03 23:01 UTC)