From 1929 to 1940, the Great Plains experienced a devastating drought. Scorching temperatures, an over-abundance of sunshine, and dry winds ravaged the land. From the Dakotas to Texas, soils turned to powder and blew away. In those hard, lean years, plains residents experienced hundreds of deadly dust storms. The Black Blizzards threw billowing clouds of dirt into the atmosphere, blotted out the sun, suffocated stock animals, and inflicted a phenomenon known as dust pneumonia on the rural population. Untold numbers died from the respiratory ailment. Continue Reading »
The Loess Bowl
A New, New Deal for the Missouri
In the 1930s, FDR provided funds to the Missouri River Navigation Project because he believed that a barge navigation channel from the river’s mouth to Sioux City would eventually carry enough commercial traffic to justify the cost of construction. He also hoped that the establishment of competition between barge companies and railroad corporations would lower transportation costs for Missouri Valley farmers and manufacturers. Valley residents would then invest the resultant transportation savings back into the Midwestern economy. Farmers would use their increased disposable income for the improvement of their farmsteads or for the purchase of tractors and trucks. Factory owners would invest in machines or hire more workers. The multiplier effect of the navigation channel would help lift the Midwestern economy out of the depths of the Great Depression.
The Trees are Going, Going, Gone
Two days ago, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources reported that 950,000 trees along the Iowa side of the Missouri River are likely to die as a consequence of the Great Flood of 2011. How the Iowa DNR came up with that figure is anyone’s guess. I think the figure of 1 million trees would have been a more impressive number, or maybe 2 million. The reality is that no one knows how many trees are going to die in the months and years ahead. But it is apparent that astronomical numbers of trees will die. Continue Reading »
Sandbars and River Booty
The Great Flood of 2011 altered the Missouri’s channel morphology in noticeable ways. In the unchannelized river at the foot of Ponca State Park (Ponca, Nebraska) the flood has rearranged the riverbed. Where fast, deep water once pushed heavily downstream, there is now a football-field-sized sandbar. Next to it, a dark, muddy shoal is beginning to emerge from the depths. Just upstream, the river is now careening through a once-calm side channel. Northwest of the bridge linking Newcastle, Nebraska, with Vermillion, South Dakota, numerous sandbars are visible in mid-channel. After a summer adrift on the waves, the topsoil of the Dakotas has finally found a resting place here. Continue Reading »
Army’s Design Channel Remains Intact
The Army’s navigation channel through the Sioux City metropolitan area appears to have survived the Great Flood of 2011 with only minimal damage. Even though powerful currents pushed rocks off riprapped wing dams and knocked askew the wooden poles atop pile dikes, the dikes and revetments continue to hold their positions in the river. The Mighty Missouri did not completely grind them down and carry them away. Rather, the training structures are at this moment directing the Missouri’s flow through what the Army calls the “design channel.” Continue Reading »
“Time is Our Enemy:” The Army Stokes Fears of Another Missouri River Deluge
On Friday, September 16, 2011, the Army released its cost estimate to repair the flood damage to levees, dams, and riverbanks in the Missouri Valley. According to officials, it will cost approximately $460 million to fix the destruction wrought on engineering structures along both the flood-stricken Missouri and Columbia rivers. The Army claims that the money must be forthcoming soon, and the damage must be fixed forthright, or the Missouri Valley and its residents will face grave danger during the 2012 runoff season. Referring to the need for quick action along the Missouri, Jud Kneuvean at the Army’s Kansas City District stated, “…honestly some of them [the projects] can’t be delayed. [Without repairs] There is a high likelihood for failure. The consequences associated with failure are high.” Kneuvean continued to stoke the public’s fear of another deluge in 2012 with the comment that “…time is our enemy.”
Kneuvean did not specify which structures are at risk of failure. It is unclear whether he is referring to the potential erosion of riprapped banks, the collapse of weakened levees, or god forbid, the loss of an upstream dam. His purposeful vagueness is an overworked but effective public relations ploy. The Army wants to manufacture fear and worst-case scenarios. It hopes that a frightened public will then accept the Army’s agenda for the river. And the Army’s agenda is nothing short of the complete restoration of its Missouri River hydraulic system to its pre-flood condition. That means the reconstruction of the defunct and flood-prone navigation channel, the repair of decrepit, useless levees, and the riprapping of blown-out bank lines. The Army wants to re-establish the status quo along the Missouri. Yet, it was that status quo that led to the Great Flood of 2011. Continue Reading »
Tagged Army Corps of Engineers, Gavin's Point Dam, General John McMahon, Iowa Corn Growers Association, Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, Jud Kneuvean, Kansas City District Army Corps of Engineers, Missouri River, Missouri River Flood 2011, Missouri River Navigation Channel, Missouri Valley, Missouri Valley Floodplan
Washed Away: The Missouri Destroys Valley Infrastructure
As river levels drop, photographs are appearing on the web of the damage inflicted by the Missouri’s floodwaters on the Missouri Valley’s infrastructure and agricultural land. What the photos make apparent is that the costs of this year’s flood will be prohibitive. In a photo posted by Omaha-area media outlets, a stretch of Interstate 680 is shown north of Council Bluffs, Iowa. The roadway has been shattered into pieces by the Missouri’s powerful currents. Flat slabs of concrete lie haphazardly atop the deconstructed highway. Logs and an odd assortment of flotsam sits on, or in between, the concrete blocks. Automobiles will not travel I-680 for a long time. The Iowa Department of Transportation estimates that it might not be reopened to traffic for two years. What is even more troubling is the news that 52 miles of Interstate 29 remains under the Missouri. What the river is doing to I-29 is anyone’s guess. But if the still submerged sections of I-29 sustain as much damage as the now visible segments of I-680, western Iowa will face traffic detours for years to come. Continue Reading »
