disposable farmers (quick revisit)

Howdy,

Sorry about opening up a hornets' nest on this subject. I agree about there being risks with having a farm on a flood plain and all. I have to say I wasn't informed on all the nuts and bolts about yearly letters and all that. However, I do think that there should be another option when it comes to this kind of thing. I live in South Central Ohio and up river there is a town called Portsmouth. It floods there every year. Well, before the year 1937 they built a flood wall around the town. They thought it would take any flood you could throw at it. Well, in 1937 the wall was overrun. So, what did they do? They built a new wall and built it so high that it would take a 500 year flood to overrun it. My point earlier was that instead of having safety plans where it's flood one guy over another, why don't they do like Portsmouth and fix the flooding issues where they happen? Just my opinion. God bless.

--old fashioned farmer

INVARIABLY, the (so-called) news media have an agenda and can no more be trusted than politicians. Occasionally, there will be something..........either in the paper or on TV....about which I have personal knowledge; THEY NEVER GET IT RIGHT. If you want to know about conditions in an area, ask someone who lives there.

I've got mixed feelings about opening the flood-gates on lesser populated areas. I'd be PO'ed too if a wall was already protecting me and someone decided that others were more important downstream.

But...... if you were considering buying a place or building a home and you drove over to that wall nearby and saw the gates that COULD BE OPENED, I guess you'd have to say that you were warned. A little due diligence and a LOT of questions would be in order.

Quite a few years ago, the Great Lakes water levels were high and people along the shore of Lake St. Clair (located between Lake Huron & Lake Erie) were in danger of being flooded. So they built a sandfilled wall along the seawalls of all those home. Paid mostly by the govt (your and my tax dollars). Then when water levels dropped, people took down the 3-4' wall that was ruining their view and lost their protection. Actually, protection was lost when the FIRST guy took down his portion. :lol: Anyway, guess who will pay for a NEW wall when the waters rise again? Look in the mirror.

Levees are a two edged sword, that's why they are only heres and theres, it keeps river water from going into flatland or up low banks, but if rain, not upriver snowmelt is the trouble, a levee keeps the rainwater from getting to the river, so those people are 'up the creek' either way. Like New Orleans, that all depends on pumps, run by old motors and engines, a real crap shoot. Your rain water is a heck of a lot cleaner than other people's river water... but a mess is a mess....

I agree about making the flood walls higher.

Are you still working up at Robert"s? I haven"t talked to you in almost 4 years, and I just bought a home down in Higginsport, I will come up and see you, I need some H parts.

That high wall would cost WAY too much. I prefer they flood the few. Maybe they'll think a little harder about building in a flood plane next time. As for any crops, too bad.

Just can not fool old mother nature no matter how high the leve or damns are built. I lived on a major flood plain for a few years. You are going to get flooded every so many years no matter what. Moved to high ground and don't live life on a moving truck. Thing I learned floods come in 2, 3, and 5 years cycles. Some less than others.

Now, what happens when across the river from Portsmouth there is another town? When P raises it's wall, then the water goes higher.

So the other town needs to raise it's walls. And then the river goes higher, so then P has to raise their walls again.

That is what is happening by Fargo/Moorehead in the Red River. It becomes a battle of who can build higher so we can let the excess water dump on the other....

Then, the surrounding farms end up with all the back-logged water that can't fit through the narrow deep channel the 2 cities create. So the water piles up deeper & deeper, flooding out farms and small villages.

What a nice deal those cities with their levees are, eh? Phht on their dikes....

In general the lower Mississippi has worked pretty good with rtheir system of levels and back-up levees. This was a truely extreme event, been 40-80 years since we saw anything like this. And the systems, tho stretched greatly, are mostly working as planned. It was planned out as a bigger system, with backup and whole regional planning. Not like the cities do now, build thier own dike & to heck with anyone else.

Would be nice to make improvements tho, I'm sure things could be better.

--->Paul

Place in West Virginia like that with the wall around the city called Guyandotte(not sure about the spelling).Its by Charleston.

the DNR will try to get all this ground for wetlands

Howdy,

I'm not at the Superstore anymore. Left there about 2 years ago. God bless.

--old fashioned farmer

The problem with the flood walls and levees are that they don't get rid of the water, they make it someone else's problem. It's hard to not protect property, but letting the water spread out upstream is what prevents problems downstream. The levee strategy seems to work pretty well until it's really stressed, then it's: address a problem here, but it causes a problem over there. Address the problem over there, and it causes a problem in another spot. Address the problem in that other spot, and... you get the idea. That big crest of water going down the Miss. is as bad as it is because it's forced into a narrow channel, just like the Japanese tsunami when it ran into those harbors. Narrower channel = higher water, that's all there is to it.