The River Always Wins
EDITOR’S NOTE: This edition of The Heat Beat was originally published on 6/5/2019. To receive future editions for FREE, smash that there button, wouldja?
TOPLINE
~90yr record flooding along Miss. River, worst since 1927 “Great Flood”
Global warming = 2019 rainfall in US most ever since records began
Levee breaks/releases pose outsize threat to marginalized communities
Next week, Army likely to open maj. spillway for only 3rd time
House GOP tried to block $19B aid pkg, now awaiting Trump signature
ACTIONS: See below, there are a few!
The Mississippi River has been flooding for months, displacing hundreds of Midwesterners and doing untold amounts of damage to people’s houses, businesses, and communities up and down its banks. Experts predict the river—which generates around $400B in economic impact—will continue to flood for many more weeks as smaller, also-flooded rivers continue to drain into it.
Good old hubris may also play a role. For the past century, the Army Corps of Engineers (plus various state and local agencies) have built thousands of miles of levees, channels, and other infrastructure to steer Ol’ Man River. But as one former riverfront mayor said: “You can’t control the Mississippi River. I have lived on it my whole life; I know the river always wins.’’
If the Mississippi River wins, ~4M people, ~1.5M homes, and 33k+ farms in its floodplains and valleys stand to lose. (Not to mention all the indirect victims who rely on the waterway for commerce, transportation, etc.) With the feds poised to release a key spillway next week, and a disaster relief bill headed to President Trump’s desk despite Republican House efforts to sink it, let’s take a closer look at the people, politics and potential consequences a-swirl in the floodwaters of the mighty Mississippi. Shall we? (We shall.)
[via]
Rain, Rain, Go Away
The Mississippi River has always flooded. But lately, it’s flooding more, more intensely, and for longer periods because there’s just more rain than there used to be. After a wet fall and a snowy winter, spring rainfalls have “smashed” records throughout the Midwest, flooding key tributaries (eg., the Arkansas & Missouri Rivers) to the Mississippi. Forecasts predict another week of heavy rains for portions of both the upper and lower Mississippi River valleys, and crests from some tributaries still haven’t hit the main river, so they’re not out of the woods/water yet.
Since I’m sure you’re wondering, yes, increased precipitation is a well-known consequence of global warming. “The real question isn’t, ‘Is climate change playing a role?’” said one atmospheric scientist of this year’s floods. “It’s, ‘How big a role is climate change playing?’” Call it “large to quite large”. The past 12 months have been the wettest ever in the United States since 1895, when we started keeping these records. From April 2018 to April 2019, the Lower 48 averaged—averaged!—36.2” of rain. It’s almost like… the climate… is changing?
Mississippi River Levees: A Brief, Incomplete Explanation
You’ve seen enough rain to know that 3ft is a lot of fucking rain. But unless you live near a major, flood-prone body of water, the concept of levees may be less obvious. Reductively: levees are manmade hills, walls, and berms built to protect houses, business, and people from floodwaters.
[via]
The Mississippi has a lot of ‘em. There are over 3,500mi of manmade levees lining the Mississippi River and its tributaries, and 2,200mi+ along the river proper—itself is only ~2,400mi overall. Those barriers (clay berms, concrete walls, you name it) protect ~1.5M homes and 33k+ farms, according to the Army Corps of Engineers (aka USACE) the federal agency that administers many of them. Not all of them; we’ll get to that.
The rub is that levees don’t really work. In fact, many hydrologists now believe they actually make flooding worse. Levees box the river in, which causes the water to flow higher and faster—which causes more severe flood damage when the levees break. (Which they will. There’s a saying on the river that there are only two types of levees: ones that have failed, and ones that will fail.) "What you're doing in many cases is taking a flood plain out there — it can be 5 [or] 6 miles wide — and you're forcing the water that would otherwise spread across that area to go through a narrow passageway,” explained one scientist.
Levee Wars Hurt The Have-Nots
So levees are an imperfect solution to a challenging problem. Noted. But because no one authority controls all the levees on the Mississippi, the barriers have also become a grim expression of how privilege shapes the consequences of climate change. Basically, places with enough wealth build levees higher do exactly that, forcing floodwaters towards places up/downstream or across the river that are too poor to match the construction. (This video does a good job showcasing it.)
This is known as a levee war, and it’s pretty ugly! Last year, a ProPublica investigation revealed a questionably-kosher lobbying effort to undermine the Feds’ ability to better regulate when/where/how high/by whomst levees are built. Riverfront districts with means in Illinois and Missouri formed a coalition and paid a law firm over $300k to advocate against key amendments to the 2016 Water Resources Development Act (which would have centralized more levee control with the USACE), and for their rights to build higher levees.
The were ultimately successful, because, mathematically speaking [$ + Congress = desired outcome]. “[T]hat doesn’t come cheap,” one of the coalition members said about the “expensive people” they hired to lobby for their levees. “You can’t just call them up on the phone and get an opinion. It doesn’t work like that,” he continued. Of course, for the people down the river, it doesn’t work at all. "People are greedy,” said one district manager in across the river in Missouri, lamenting the situation. “They're sending the water our way, and there's nothing we can do about it.”
Party Over Country: Disaster Relief Edition!
In case this didn’t feel political enough, there’s more! Yesterday the House of Representatives finally passed a $19B federal disaster relief package 354-58. All the nays were Republicans, which is not surprising given the bill only made it through after GOP congresspeople temporarily scuttled it three separate times on account of it not containing funds for Trump’s border wall.
The bill, which would send about $10B in flood-relief aid to the Midwest, is now on Donnie’s desk. He’s expressed support for it, but he’s also expressed support for middle-class tax cuts, lower prescription drug prices, a blind trust arrangement for his company, a $1T infrastructure package… you get the idea.
[via]
No Bonanza At The Morganza
This Sunday, after weeks of debate, USACE will open a key spillway in Louisiana to try to provide relief upstream. This will only be the third opening of the Morganza Spillway since it was built in 1954. One journalist who was there for the previous opening in 2011 described what to expect for Bloomberg: “the ground will shake, and snakes will flee.”
This sounds like a scene from a Godsmack music video, which is unfortunately pretty tight. But this is real life, and it has real consequences for the people who own the hundreds of fishing camps, houses, businesses, and rich delta cropland in the spillway’s 100-square-mile path. In 2011, the opening caused at least $56M in direct damages, killed hundreds of thousands of animals, and stood to impact 17 hospitals and 11 nursing homes. If/when USACE opens the spillway again, all that and more will once again be in harm's way.
ACTIONS
Consider donating to ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that partners with local publications to do hardcore investigative climate journalism with teeth. (FWIW: I make a small monthly donation to this org.)
Consider a financial or in-kind donation to the Salvation Army’s Central Territory office in Iowa, or if you’re in the area, inquire about volunteering.
If your congressperson is one of these 58 people, call them up and ask why they dragged their feet on passing the $19B disaster relief bill.
I'm not the one who's so far away, when I feel the snakebite enter my vei-ei-ei-eins...