Rivers Flooding
 

Interesting, sounds like a good idea. Put pants with an elastic waistband on the rivers instead of a leather belt. That way when the river is a glutton, his pants can expand with his waist. Mother Nature is tough, we will probably do better in the end by giving her more latitude.

This method of flood control was discussed in a college course of mine in about 1980. For some reason, the Corps of Engineers has always arrogantly favored narrow concrete or leveed channels. They thought they could engineer their way around the problem. They didn't realize that engineering does not always require concrete - or massive levees right at the river bank.

Sort of like the tsunami walls that were put up in Japan. Sometimes mother nature likes to remind us how insignificant we are.

But other solutions don't cost enough for them to consider...

Kind of off topic, but I flew from DC to San Antonio on Friday and was absolutely amazed at the level of flooding we flew over in the Mississippi River area. It looked miles wide, even from 35,000 feet.

like what?

There are no solutions...water is inexorable.

it is a good idea -- one problem is that the areas you WANT to use as overflow have already been settled, sometimes even urbanized, so people are not real happy about becoming an overflow zone

historically, the areas that have flooded over the last few centuries are also the richest farmland (because of the sediment loads dropped there in those floods) - they are then farmed & have farm houses built convenient to the farms... in the recent Cairo event (levee blast) the farmers were claiming that their top soil wold be scoured away by the flood - seems unlikely, but we shall see

another problem is that the Corps likes to engineer things, hence the propensity to channelize river beds

- that is changing as they get more recently educated people on board, but those people also have to rise to the top, and that takes decades

3rd, there is always a lot of politics involved

but read mid-way down p. 2 of the article -- this is going to get worse in the future

they're supposed to open the Morganza Spillway later this week, that water runs thru the Atchafalya spillway and our two towns are built on either side of the Atchafalya river. water is expected to be 14ft above flood level by friday. forced mandatory evacuations for areas not protected by levees

they popped Bonnet Carre open today - seems a tad early, but this is one big flood...

Good Luck!