Cut to the chase – Magnolia Tribune

Kelley Williams writes that the Corps of Engineers makes floods worse for some and higher for others.

I used to put in writing about Mississippi River floods on account of Corps of Engineers tasks. Yep, that’s proper. The Corps causes floods. Wait, you thought rain precipitated floods. OK, it does.  However the Corps makes floods worse for some and higher for others. Its levees make flooding worse for these contained in the levees.  And higher for these exterior the levees.

The Corps Previous River Management Complicated (ORCC) close to Louisiana’s Angola Jail simply south of the Mississippi line makes flooding worse contained in the levees.  The flooding impacts a few half million acres in Mississippi and Louisiana owned by over 500 plaintiffs who sued the Corps in 2019 for taking their properties.  I’m a type of plaintiffs. I stop writing about floods after I grew to become one. I’m beginning once more. I can’t wait on the courts.  I’ll be lifeless.  My boys could also be too.

Typically the Corps pays for flood easements earlier than the actual fact.  More often than not it floods first and pays damages later – if courts make it.  That’s what it’s performed with flooding attributable to the ORCC.  However courts take endlessly.  That’s good for the Corps as a result of plaintiffs don’t dwell endlessly.  The Corps does.  

The Corps default protection is to obfuscate (lie) and delay.  Justice delayed is justice denied for plaintiffs.  It’s a win for the Corps and the Generals who command the Mississippi River Fee and the ORCC. Their tour of obligation is often 2-3 years.  Then they transfer on to their subsequent star – with no regrets for the injury they denied and ignored.  They kick the can. They don’t make waves. They didn’t get to be Generals by being dumb. 

The ORCC story begins with an enormous Mississippi River flood in 1950.  A part of the flood took a shortcut to Gulf by way of the Atchafalaya River.  It discharged close to Morgan Metropolis LA as a substitute of New Orleans.  The Mississippi was attempting to alter course to search out the shortest steepest path to the Gulf.  Gravity makes it do that each 800 years or so when the outdated route silts in.  Congress handed the 1954 Flood Management Act telling the Corps to disregard gravity and maintain the Mississippi River in its outdated channel.  

So, the Corps constructed the Previous River Management Construction in 1963 to do this.  It diverted 23% of the Mississippi’s move down the Atchafalaya and stored 77% in the primary channel.  That was the break up in 1950.  Peas porridge excellent.  Gravity didn’t assume it was excellent although.  In a very huge flood in 1973, the river broke by way of the management construction and despatched extra move down the steeper Atchafalaya the place gravity needed it to go.  Water simply naturally flows downhill.  

The Corps ignored Mom Nature once more.  It repaired and added to the outdated construction (now known as the ORCC) in 1980 to maintain 77% of the river flowing the place the Corps needed it to move.  Then it caught a finger in Mom Nature’s eye.  It agreed to function a brand new construction – an influence plant that used a lot of the 23% move to the Atchafalaya to generate electrical energy.  

The Corps knew the brand new construction would enhance the autumn out of sediments in the primary channel and make it increased.  And that this may impede move of the 77% to the Gulf at New Orleans.  And that this may trigger the extent (stage) of the Mississippi River to rise.  And that the upper levels would make floods increased and longer and trigger extra flood injury.  And would additionally enhance the top (power of gravity) attempting to ship extra move down the Atchafalaya.  And make a course change extra possible.  However the Corps did it anyway.  Politics beat gravity.  Thus far. 

The river hasn’t modified course but.  It should although.  Gravity is inexorable. Meantime floods contained in the levees in Mississippi and Louisiana get increased and longer and extra damaging – primarily on account of elevated sediments from ORCC.  The price of that injury is paid by victims of river politics with properties within the Mississippi River batture (land contained in the levees). They flood extra so these within the Atchafalaya basin will flood much less.  And so the trillions of {dollars} a course change will value will likely be delayed. 

Rainfall has elevated solely 7% for the reason that first management construction started working in 1963.  However flooding contained in the levees within the Natchez attain of the river has elevated 700% – over three months a yr now vs. 12 days in 1962 (10 yr rolling common).  Corps research predict this flooding will proceed to extend and transfer upriver previous Greenville.  

File lengthy floods in 2018-20 destroyed the distinctive bottomland hardwood ecosystem immortalized in John James Audubon’s work of the early 1800’s. (Historic footnote: Audubon stayed in a house close to Angola owned by a plaintiff.)  Plaintiffs can restore flood injury to camps and constructions if they’ll afford it. They’ll’t restore or restore the ecosystem that floods have destroyed. Its distinctive worth is gone.  Ceaselessly.  

The federal government ought to pay plaintiffs for the injury to and destruction of their properties the Corps has precipitated.  Now.  Not 20 years from now when litigation works its approach by way of the courts.  The price of that injury and destruction will likely be only a fraction of the financial savings from delaying the course change.  It’s a cut price for the federal government.  It’s the honest factor to do for plaintiffs.

Let’s lower to the chase. Now.