Great Flood in Mississippi River Basin: Major Factors

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Table of Contents

Introduction: Mississippi River
Floods: An Overview
Works Cited

Introduction: Mississippi River

Mississippi River, the longest river in the United States and, with its extensive offshoots, is one of the most important river systems of the world. Times of yore Ojibwa Indians, roaming the forests of Wisconsin, called it Missi Sipi, or “Great River.” In the lower valley, where the impulsive current distended in flood time runs over its banks to change millions of acres of productive land into a moving sea, other tribes labeled it the “Father of Waters.” Both names were appropriate, for the scope and volume of this vast stream have made it almost a synonym for great rivers everywhere; even the Volga River has been termed the “Russian Mississippi.”(Lane, 1)

The length of the Mississippi has been variously interpreted. The U.S. Geological Survey calculates its length at 3,710 miles (5,970 km) from the headwaters of Missouri to the delta outlet on the Gulf of Mexico. The Nile River is slightly longer. The length of the Mississippi is not constant; horseshoe loops are cut through, reducing the figure, which swells again when new loops are created as the river meanders down its lower valley..”(Lane, 1)

Meanwhile the American Civil War was going on (from 1861 to 1865), the Mississippi provided a route for invasion for the Union militaries. The taking into custody of river cities like New Orleans, Memphis, and Vicksburg, Mississippi, split the Confederacy in half and made the triumph for the North a reality. In the post-war time, railroads in a little while replaced most of the waterway’s previous traffic of steamboat. As the Eads Bridge in reached its completion in 1874, it linked St. Louis and East St. Louis, Illinois; this supplied a most important rail passage stretching over the river. A number of overpasses were constructed in the years to follow. (Coffman, 1)

The significance of the Mississippi as a shipping route has augmented very much since the 1920s. No other way of carriage can transport heaps of weighty, massive freight as inexpensively as the tugboats and barges on the grand river belt. (Coffman, 1)

The river has been the object of legend, song, and story. For thousands it became the passageway to dreams of greater fortune or a better way of life. For others it was the commercial lifeline for the central section of the United States. But, as was shown again in the summer of 1993, the Mississippi River is also a powerful, unpredictable, and deadly force.

Formed from melting glaciers of an ice age two million years ago, the Mississippi and its tributaries drain 31 states and two Canadian provinces, a total of 3.2 million square kilometers (1.2 million sq mi). This river basin provides some of the richest agricultural lands in the world, but farming these fertile floodplains (the areas underwater during a major flood) is sometimes difficult. (Mississippi Flood, 1)

Every year the Mississippi spills over its banks in a natural cycle. It deposits alluvium–particles of sand and clay–over miles of floodplain. This alluvium enriches the soil and supports an intricate web of plants and animals. It also provides rich farmland. But to live and farm in the floodplain, people have had to learn to control the power of the Mississippi. (Mississippi Flood, 1)

Floods: An Overview

Floods take place when the waters of rivers, lakes, or streams spill over their banks and pour out onto the adjoining land. Time and again bodies of water rise greatly in volume without causing floods. From time to time mainly in the spring, the amount of water in rivers and streams rises to a higher level than usual, and the excess spills over the banks, causing little damage. It is only when great amounts of overflowing water cause severe damage to large surrounding areas that bodies of water can be said to be in flood.(Smith, 1)

Floods are caused by many different things. Often heavy rainstorms that last for a brief time can cause a flood. But not all heavy storms are followed by flooding. If the surrounding land is flat and can absorb the water, no flooding will occur. If, however, the land is hard and rocky, heavy rains cannot be absorbed. Where the banks are low, a river may overflow and flood adjacent lowlands. (Smith, 1)

Sometimes less severe storms can cause flooding. This happens when earlier rains have filled the soil with so much moisture that no more rain can be absorbed. If the ground is frozen, the rains are unable to sink into the hard earth. The waters then swell the rivers, and the result is damaging floods. (Smith, 1)

In numerous parts of the world, floods are caused by tropical storms called hurricanes or typhoons. The hurricanes of the West Indies and the Caribbean start in the Atlantic Ocean north of the equator. As they gather force, they move west and may curve north toward the Gulf Coast of America or the Atlantic seaboard. They bring destructive winds of high speed, torrents of rain, and flooding. Along the coast, flooding is sometimes caused by storm winds and high tides.

Inside such places as the northern United States, Canada, and Scandinavia, where winter temperatures are low, heavy snowfalls may cause floods. Sometimes very deep snow stays on the ground until the spring thaw sets in. When warm weather comes, the snow melts quickly and the danger of flooding increases. If the ground is not frozen when the snow falls, quantities of melting snow can sink into the earth, and no flooding will occur. But if the ground is frozen far below the surface, very little of the melting snow is absorbed by the soil. This is especially true in mountainous areas when melting is accompanied by spring rains. Water washes down the steep slopes of the mountains. Mountain streams and rivers overflow, bringing floods and destruction to the valleys below. (Smith, 1)

The Great Flood

Sizeable downpour in June and July in the Upper Midwest, shared with damp soil situations, was the reason for ruthless overflow in the Upper Mississippi River basin. During June, 8 inches of rainfall fell transversely to the Upper Midwest. This caused overflow on waterways in Minnesota and Wisconsin and ultimately pressed the Mississippi River to a top at St. Louis on July 12th of approximately 43 feet, equating the preceding phase of evidence. (The Great USA Flood of 1993, n. p)

During July, Iowa was struck with frequent highest downpours. Outburst overall equal to 8 inches was another time familiar. Heavy downpours were recorded at Des Moines, Iowa and Skunk rivers specifically the cities of Iowa and Des Moines were severely struck on July 9 by the flood.

The gushes from these rivers collective with previously near-record streams on the Mississippi River to thrust the juncture at St. Louis equipped a latest confirmation elevated stage of 47 feet. (The Great USA Flood of 1993, n. p)

By almost the end of July heavy downpours started again in Missouri, Kansas, North and South Dakota and Nebraska. In these areas record overflow and flooding took place. The Missouri River ridged at around 48.9 feet at Kansas City shattering the earlier flood records, established in 1951, which was 2.7 feet. This ridge drove on through the Missouri River making latest records at St. Charles, Boonville, Hermann and Jefferson City. This record pours linked the by now over spilling Mississippi River very soon north of St. Louis, and rammed the Mississippi to one more record peak at St. Louise which was 49.47 feet. (The Great USA Flood of 1993, n. p)

Restraining the river has never been relaxed. More than a hundred years ago, author and river pilot Mark Twain noted that people “cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it.” The writer’s words proved true in 1993 when an unusual weather pattern brought two months of heavy rain to the upper Mississippi Valley. This water, combined with waters from heavy spring rains throughout the Midwest, resulted in the worst flood of the upper Mississippi in the 20th century. (Mississippi Flood, 1)

The flood of 1993 caused extensive damage. Water reached higher levels than anyone could remember. About 93,000 square kilometers (36,000 sq mi) were affected. Throughout the Midwest almost 40,000 people were forced from their homes as rivers leading to the Mississippi flooded, too. Floodwater from a Mississippi tributary poured into Des Moines, Iowa, 200 kilometers (124 mi) from the Mississippi. It swept into the city’s water-treatment plant, cutting off the water supply for nearly two weeks. In all, crop loss and property damage were estimated at more than $10 billion. The flood claimed about 50 lives.

The flood demonstrated that even the best designed flood-control systems cannot always contain the Mississippi River. People cannot stop the natural cycle of flooding that has evolved over two million years. The flood has forced a debate over the value of flood control on the river. (Mississippi Flood, 1)

Flood-Control Measures Made Flooding Worse

Over the past seven decades, engineers have built a complex system of flood controls on the Mississippi. The engineers rely heavily on levees, embankments running alongside rivers. They hold the water within the river’s channel instead of letting it spread out over the floodplains. With its floodplains kept dry through engineering, the Mississippi River basin now yields about 40 percent of the total agricultural production of the United States. Moreover, engineering makes navigation on the river much easier.

Levees save lives and protect some fields and towns from complete flooding. Yet they can be dangerous. They increase the flood water’s pressure and depth. They can actually cause more damage by allowing floodwaters to build up in a narrow channel and then overcome weaker or lower levees downstream. During the 1993 flood, some levees were purposely destroyed to flood sparsely populated regions and save more populated areas. (Mississippi Flood, 1)

Together with the levees, a network of dams and reservoirs along the Mississippi’s drainage area can hold back usual amounts of water and even moderate amounts of floodwater. The water released from these structures cuts a deep channel for navigation. It also equalizes water levels. During major floods, however, there is often so much water that the levees and dams cannot control it.

People have changed the Mississippi’s natural ability to bounce back from floods. Wetlands, bends in the river, and open floodplains are natural means for storing floodwater. Construction of levees, dams, and reservoirs, and the straightening and deepening of the river have removed these natural flood-control measures. After the flood of 1993, where the water was controlled by human-made devices, water remained on fields in some places for more than six months. The standing water damaged farm production until the next full growing season.

Most of the plants and animals that live in the Mississippi River basin have adapted to floods. These species have lived through many floods in the past. As the floodwaters recede, their populations come back. It will be a long time, though, before the human population fully recovers from the damage brought by the flood of 1993. (Mississippi Flood, 1)

Factors in the Failure of Flood Control

Flood management has been a state-run apprehension for a long time, but overflow catastrophe assistance became a central subject when in 1927 the Great Flood hit. In the month of April that very year, the Mississippi River penetrated levees constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers to hold the river and support farming activities. The floodwaters took over an expansion about the magnitude of New England (only Maine can be minus), equal to a profundity of 30 feet. Floodwater distressed states from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma to; however, the actual calamity struck the lower Mississippi, from Cairo, Ill., deep into the Gulf of Mexico. Almost 1,000,000 people became dispossessed of homes and a number of people met tragic flood-caused deaths. (Clement, 1)

It was a countrywide misfortune, the state’s biggest flood tragedy-yet the central administration, whose shaken levees were extensively criticized for the tragedy since they had boasted a fake feeling of safety for the people who resided behind them, paid not even a cent in aid to the victims of the tragedy. As a substitute, neighboring churches arranged for clothes drives. The Red Cross provided food for almost 700,000 affected people for months.

The peopled stated that the efforts for these local aids were not sufficient. The entire country should stand for relief help. And history writers would the overflow “a watershed moment” in state psychology in the days to come. Previous to it, home states and communities had all the responsibility for downpour assistance efforts. After the year 1927, the responsibility was relayed to the central administration, both to thwart floods, and to help out the affected. Ever since 1927, as such, the national government has granted billions of dollars in flood assistance funds, largely via the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its precursor organization. Finance history writers indicate that this changeover from local to state-run liability in turn maintained what financial experts name it as “moral hazard,” the feeling that local groups would hereafter take higher perils in relation to overflowing than they in any other way could have been – permitting more expansion on the flood-plain, for instance – just as a proprietor may not be much cautious about fire chances if an indemnity corporation is going to pay back the homeowner if his house catches fire and burns up. (Clement, 1)

In the expectation that one more catastrophic overflow can be barred, the central government with the help of other organizations also increased to doubled its endeavors to manage the state’s rivers flowing protocols, adding mended levees with huge dams and basins intended to hold back water stream and floodway conduits enable managed openings for soaring water.

But the difficulty has not reduced. Actually, losses by flood in the United States of America progressively shot up throughout the 20th century. One analyst states that from between 1916 and 1985, the per capita damaged by floods in the United States of America went up by a part of 2.5 in steady dollars. One more analysis of whole flood damages places the present statistics at more than $6 billion yearly, a four-layered addition (in steady dollars) since the start of the 1900s. One more method to view the tendency is: during 1960 to 1985, when the central government expended 38 billion dollars on controlling floods, standard yearly flood losses (attuned to price rises) went more than twice. (Clement, 1)

The total of central government’s money used on adversity assistance is enormous. During the years from 1977 to 1993, in accordance with a 1998 General Accounting Office examination, central agencies expended almost 120 billion dollars on central catastrophe help, a great deal of it for flood calamities. Almost three-quarters of the whole amount was put to recovery efforts in the aftermaths of disaster striking. 21% of the whole budget was expended on dams and levees, and five percent was used on adversity training and reaction. Just two percent of the entire budget was employed to practical attempts to put off prospective calamities. (Clement, 1)

The breakdown of controlling floods and relieving people from aftermaths of flood became unhappily clear with the Midwest overflow of 1993, a tragedy which cost the country as large amount as 16 billion dollars. After assessing the 1993 overflow in the background of the nation’s sore past of efforts for controlling floods, a presidential advice-giving board issued a statement in July 1994 which required a complete repair of the policy of US flood control. Sen. Max Baucus of Montana appeared to be a principal supporter for the board’s proposals, discontinuing legislation that could have financed a number of old-standing flood management plans.

The rising viewpoint proposed that we ought to depend less on made-up dams and levees managing floods, and the so forth – because they cannot offer overall protection and may in fact add to the danger by giving fake assurance to proprietors and companies that place behind their defensive walls.

It was advised that public and their properties be shifted from the flood-expansion – the locales of uppermost danger, in order that they would not be in need to be saved and reconstructed after every consecutive tragedy. It suggested greater dependence on nonstructural resolutions, like reinstating quagmires which can work as normal dabs, taking in extra waters and breaking down pouring rains from getting to the rivers. (Clement, 1)

It also recommended developments in danger and liability control, encouraging inhabitants in flood-expansions to purchase insurance for flood and bringing in the regulations for zoning and maintaining systems that would defend against frequent reparation in prospective floods. Ever since then, a few government organizations at home, at state and central banks have shifted to ratify a few of these steps. Davenport, Iowa, for instance, chose to not construct a wall to hold back the river from their district and in its place constructed an expansion on the flood-related terrain. Central and state funds have been expended to bogs reinstatement. In Austin, Minn., 163 houses were enthused off the Minnesota River’s flood terrain, with monetary assistance from FEMA. And the insurance regulations for floods were stiffened to push more citizens to take it so more constructions would be saved. (Clement, 1)

But accomplishment of these degrees has been greasy, at best – partial by shortage of financial support and political determination. Furthermore, in the Ninth District, as somewhere else, constructing dams so as to prevent floods still continues the default option, a well-liked preparation selected by makers of decision partly owing to the fact that it appeared to be an instant, substantial solution and partly because federal money finance the expenditure. (Clement, 1)

Works Cited

Clement, Douglas. Fedgazette. The failure of flood control. Fedgazette. 2001. eLibrary.

Proquest CSA. ROBINSON SECONDARY SCH. 2008. Web.

Coffman, John Edwin. “Mississippi River.” World Book Online Reference Center. 2008. Web.

Lane, Ferdinand C. “Mississippi River.” Encyclopedia Americana. 2008. Grolier Online. Web.

Mississippi Flood. Earth Explorer. Enteractive. 1995. eLibrary. Proquest CSA. ROBINSON SECONDARY SCH. Web.

Smith, Guy-Harold. “Floods.” The New Book of Knowledge®. 2008. Grolier Online. Web.

“The Great USA Flood of 1993”. 2008. Web.

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