Last month, the Army Corp of Engineers opened the Morganza Spillway – effectively flooding farmlands, homes and communities – in order to save Baton Rouge and New Orleans. This was only the second time that the spillway has been opened its history.
As I describe in my post on MetropolisPOV, this is not a remarkable flood for the Mississippi River, when considered from the standpoint of the river. As anyone can see from the before and after satellite images, this flood is well within the natural floodplain that the river created over its lifetime.
The footprint of the big cities along the river is a tiny fraction of the overall floodplain of the Mississippi. In our eyes the economic value of these cities justifies the large costs of floodwalls and pump systems. It may not be reasonable to talk about moving them back out of the low lying floodplains, but these defense systems themselves can be a hazard if they create a sense of complacency about protections that may not be adequate or properly maintained and the risks will be just multiplied by lack of preparedness.
The blame for sacrificing these communities lies not with the Army Corp of Engineers, but belongs to the national policy making that has allowed, and continues to allow, development and constraints of the river. The very idea of public policy is to look out beyond the short term needs of a community and to evaluate options that are going to be sustainable over the long haul.
Image Gallery:
