Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Louisiana flood fight begins as Mississippi rises ~WWL

Corps of Engineers prepares for Bonnet Carre Spillway opening~Matt Scallan

John Barry: Blowing the levee is not some wild idea drawn up on a napkin ~Levees.org

2 comments:

matthew said...

It might not be drawn up on a napkin, but something you can wipe with nonetheless.

There is something going on I don't yet grasp. A story to be uncovered. Something fishy is is in the works...

Currently I am looking out across a US Corps of Engineers flood control reservoir at a Corp's flood control dam in central Ohio. It's been raining heavily for weeks. Usually in a situation like this (as it did a few months ago) this dam and those around are closed and the lakes rise. Creeks overflow and fields flood...as the system is designed to alleviate major flooding downriver.

Oddly enough NONE of the local dams are shut, and in fact this reservoir has dropped a number of feet over the last two weeks! That means there is actually more water heading downstream than the rain is delivering!

So why is the Corps of Engineers blowing up a levee at the corner of the Ohio & Mississippi rivers while not utilizing the flood control system upstream?

Editilla said...

Thanks Matthew.
"So why is the Corps of Engineers blowing up a levee at the corner of the Ohio & Mississippi rivers while not utilizing the flood control system upstream?"
Why, that would mean they wouldn't get all this work fixing their systemic repeating bad engineering. They built this system so it would fuck up just right, then they are the ones who get to "reduce risk" on what they have already built. It's simple really. This is how the Corps maintains absolute control over funding between different congressional districts, from New Orleans to Fargo, from Nashville to Las Vegas.
I know it sounds absurd, but they've been at this since before our grand parents were born.
Really. They build things badly so they can fix them when they break. The Corps of Engineers has done this with everything they've touched.