If you lived in Louisiana, what you think about government would depend on where your home was, wouldn't it?
Butte La Rose is one of dozens of small rural communities in and around the Atchafalaya River Basin being flooded this week to spare population centers in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Officials are slowly opening Morganza Spillway gates to relieve pressure on the Mississippi. It's part of a plan developed in the decades following a catastrophic flood in 1927 and used now for only the second time.
Critics of government action where it is doubtful there should be government action (such as, oh, me) often say that all government does is decide who the winners and losers will be, which is most often a pragmatic decision rather than a philosophical one. In this horrible but grimly compelling flood-watch season, we can see how ominous that power to decide really is. If you live in New Orleans or Baton Rouge, we're there for you. But if you live out in the Cajun Sticks, well, screw you. Why are the property and welfare of the ones being sacrificed less worthy than the property and welfare of the ones being protected?
I understand the logic and the reasoning and the calculations used. A little is being sacrificed to save a lot. The more easily replaced or restored is being sacrificed to protect the harder to replace or restore. The population density of cities creates not only a greater physical infrastructure but also a greater sense of regional identify. When our great cities are threatened, we feel especially vulnerable and diminished.
But though such decisions can be justifed, or at least credibly defended, they shouldn't go unexamined. People choose to live in those cities, after all, so they should be willing to accept the risks as well as the advantages. And there is something perverse about continuing to spend billions and billions to protect and rebuild and protect and rebuild again a city that pretty clearly seems to be in the wrong place.
Comments
With cities clamoring for economic development, they have forgotten one thing; water does not permeate a non porous material quickly, resulting in nearly 99% runoff. I ran into this first hand in Lynchburg, VA when a developer decided to just clear the brush leaving leaves on the side of the slope. In a small rain I measured 60 cubic feet a minute running through my back yard where before it was dry. Why did this happen? I contacted the county experts who were baffled by the photos and the rainfall. After being told that the engineering calculations had shown I should not have a problem, they gave up. I on the other hand purchased the manual on storm water runoff and began from scratch. It did not take long to find the problem. About 100 years ago civil engineers misinterpreted a national weather chart that identified the type II two year storm parameters over 24 hours. Using their assumptions on permeation of water into different soils, slopes, vegetation and velocity, they assumed that most of the water would be absorbed. 90% runoff from streets and roofs (my roof does not leak and my road does not absorb10% of a 4 inch two year rain over 24 hours. The biggest problem is they looked at 24 hours (static load) versus dynamic loading. I created a new curve for them to use. It identified the accumulated rainfall during the 24 hours and at what point the ground became saturated (100% runoff). In simple terms a typical two year storm will saturate the ground just as the peak rain intensity falls. This results in 100% runoff during the peak. Based on the civil engineering calculations only 20 to 30% of all the rain falling during a 24 hour period runs off. This is not true. The state of VA now used my information in the training of site inspectors and evaluators.
Taking this step further, large cities created very large runoffs. Building levies restrict the runoff to a narrow channel. These restrictions backs up water and in places where there are no levies, flooding occurs. Fort Wayne levies actually hurt Decatur and the area in between because the levies restrict flow.
The levies were built to channel water and protect property. The problem is each property within the levy does not hold its runoff for any amount of time for a slow discharge into a natural drainage.
I heard that army corps of engineers paid the land owners for the right to flood their land years ago. This was probably and one time payment is part of the covenants and that many of the parcels have changed hands with many of the new owners unaware of this previous sale.
It is my opinion these gates should have been opened up and a small amount of water let go over the past month. There is a natural drainage and because of the levy, this natural drainage has dried up. There could have been a smaller discharge flowing for a month with a lot less damage to accomplish the same thing.