Flooding is costing farmers 3 Million a day

[tangent4ronpaul]

So says Fox. That's 27 Billion in 3 months.

Think this might cause some shortages and drive up food prices more?

Anyone know what crops are getting wiped out?

[liberalnurse]

I know here in Rural PA, the farmers haven't been able to get into their fields because it's to wet. Raining again yesterday and today. We've had several small floods that made the fields next ro creeks and the susquehanna river look like lakes. I realize this isn't near the magnitude of what LA, MI, and MO are going though but it's still gonna hurt.

[torchbearer]

most crops i've seen in louisiana this year are- corn, soybean, sugar cane, cotton.

[pcosmar]

Flooding happens nearly every year. Snow melts,Spring rains come, it is a fact of life.
I spent several weeks pumping my basement. (drain not draining)

I am not sure "flood control" is a good term, nor a good idea.
It's not nice to mess with mother nature.

[tangent4ronpaul]

15' deep water type flooding?

Ma must be PISSED!

Maybe they should switch crops to rice...

[Badger Paul]

RP brought up a good point that the Army Corps has so restricted the natural flow of the river, that the Feds are basically screwing the farmers by flooding their land to protect the citites (even though low lying lands are being flooded anyway). Is that what we pay our taxes for, to pick winners and losers?

[pcosmar]

RP brought up a good point that the Army Corps has so restricted the natural flow of the river, that the Feds are basically screwing the farmers by flooding their land to protect the citites (even though low lying lands are being flooded anyway). Is that what we pay our taxes for, to pick winners and losers?

Ron said that? I missed it. He must be reading my mind again.

[pcosmar]

15' deep water type flooding?

Ma must be PISSED!

Maybe they should switch crops to rice...

But would they miss out on subsidies?

[tangent4ronpaul]

But would they miss out on subsidies?

I hear Japan is paying primo prices for food imports...

[Live Free or Die]

Flood them or plow them under- same effect. Old deal, same as the New Deal.

I almost expect some horrible livestock diseases to suddenly crop up this summer, necessitating a mass culling. 'Cause running the livestock into the Mississippi river would be too obvious this time around. Well, and it's full up. :p

[libertyjam]

The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise...
- Mark Twain in Eruption

Up through Missouri the bluffs that form the river basin can be pretty close on the eastern side, but on the western side are generally far from the main river course, in places 20 miles. The highly productive river bottom land along the river would not stay so productive if the floods did not come every once in while. Largely due to the efforts of the US Army Corps of Engineers, Louisiana has been losing about 25 sq mi. of marshes and wetlands every year, the most important nursery for the abundance of the US Gulf waters there is. In the space of 200 years from construction of the levy and dam system the entire ecosystem of the river delta could disappear and with it the entire livelihoods of much of Southern Louisiana's coast, especially seafood and not counting thousands of species of millions of migratory birds.


A variety of forces are eating away these wetlands. The first has probably always taken a toll--subsidence. When the river lays down its burden of sediment, there is lots of water in the mix. As the weight of overlying mud bears down, individual grains of sediment are pressed together, squeezing the water out. The mud settles, and the whole delta sinks a little.

For untold thousands of years, this sinking was more than balanced by the constant addition of new sediment carried down by the river, but in the last century, we've spent billions of dollars to change that. In the early 1900s, the Corps of Engineers began building dams on the upper river and its tributaries, partly to control flooding, partly to deepen the channel for commercial navigation. The dams are excellent sediment traps--they've reduced the amount of sediment arriving at the mouth of the Mississippi by more than 70 percent.

The Corps' traditional dual mission--flood control and improved navigation--have reshaped the Mississippi delta in other ways. Following the gigantic killer flood of 1927, the Corps redoubled its effort to contain the river with levees along the banks. When the river showed signs of shifting its flow into the lower Atchafalaya drainage in the 1950s, the Corps was there to build a huge diversion dam and lock, stopping the change and forcing the river to stay in its traditional channel. This gigantic project, combined with a system of levees downstream and constant dredging, has maintained the existing deep-water route to New Orleans and protected the city's status as a major port. The combination of these manipulations has worked a powerful change on the delta.

The river once shifted back and forth, dropping its sediment load on the continental shelf--now, it flows down the conduit the Corps has created, dropping its sediment off the edge of the shelf into the deep water of the Gulf. Without the constant addition of new sediment, there is nothing to compensate for the natural settling of the marsh bottom. As a result, millions of acres that once supported expanses of marsh vegetation are now open bays.

The channeling of the lower Mississippi has also reduced the amount of fresh water that spreads through the coastal marshes. Salt water seeps in to fill the loss and kills freshwater vegetation. The transition is often so rapid that the marsh bottom is washed away before saltwater plants can establish themselves. This leads to more wetland loss. http://www.wildfowlmag.com/conservation/marshes_0718/

"The swamps and marshes of coastal Louisiana are among the Nation's most fragile and valuable wetlands, vital not only to recreational and agricultural interests but also the State's more than $1 billion per year seafood industry."
S. Jeffress Williams, U.S. Geological Survey

I feel for those farmers and people that are being flooded. However any building in the Mississippi's flood basin should be viewed as entirely temporary when constructed, much like any building built on a channel island or along the coast prone to Hurricanes. The opening of the spillway levy's in Southern Louisiana represents the first time in 40 years the ability of the river to start to repair and reinvigorate the entire Louisiana coastline below Opelousas basin. The river embodies and carries with it the cycle of life, the floods bring with them the promise of future plenty.

[libertyjam]

So says Fox. That's 27 Billion in 3 months.

Think this might cause some shortages and drive up food prices more?

Anyone know what crops are getting wiped out?

I just noticed, but am surprised no one else caught this,
3 million a day does not equal 27 Billion in 3 months, someone slipped a two decimal points in. 3 mill/day = roughly 270 mill/3 mnths, 27 B = 27,000 million.