Sunday Rapid City Journal reporter Kevin Woster interviewed former South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds about the flooding in Pierre. Rounds according to the Woster article Rounds put the blame of the flooding on the water mismanagement of the Corps of Engineers, and stated to Woster that he thought living by a flood preventing structure like the Oahe dam protected his property. With the high run off on the Mississippi and the Missouri it seems that flood waters will flood some areas of Pierre and Ft. Pierre. Rounds comments seems like political pandering instead of anger and frustration.
The dams did their job by preventing the floods. They were never designed to protect land. No structure provides 100% protection. The Corps knew that they were going to have higher than normal precipitation in the basin, but not this high. The Blog the Interested Party had reported on this as early as January, and the Corps mentioned it in a article in Yankton Press and Dakotan February.
My sympathy does go out to the families who are hurting because of this flood, but the reality is preventative measures could have been taken by these residents or land owners. If people wanted to protect their investment from flooding, the mechanism available to them was Federal Flood Insurance. People like M. Rounds who now complains that the Corps had failed to do their job by not protecting his property on the flood plain need to look back less than sixty years ago at the 1952 flood. If they would have looked at what flooded back then they would have known that they had a possible risk of flooding. Blaming the Corps now because he did not take the correct precautions is not the Corps fault. Does Rounds have an alternative to the Corps?
Two popular alternatives to the Corps and the dams are the Missouri Valley Authority (MVA) or get rid of the dams. The MVA was supposed to mimic the Tennessee Valley Authority. During the creation of the Pick-Sloan Plan part of the Flood Control Act this idea was brought up by President Roosevelt other regional supporters like the Farmers Union. The MVA would work like the TVA. The MVA failed because the states did not want a bureaucratic body appointed by the Executive branch to regulate the water. The states through the Missouri River States Committee (MRSC), a group of the 10 basin governors and a state representatives, decided to side with the Corps and the Bureau of Reclamation. The MRSC believed that the plan would go through Congress with little changes, and the states at that time had a good working relationship with the Corps.
The other option would be to get rid of the dams an idea posed by Dr. Robert Kelly Schienders and Stephen Ambrose. If this option happened people living along the river would have to move to higher ground or risk yearly flooding. The river would be less static and more difficult for barge transportation in the South and recreational purposes in the North. Both regions economies would be affected greatly by this decision.
If people knew these options, we could have an honest discussion instead of the yearly blame the Corps. This flood is probably a once and a lifetime occurrence hopefully, but we need to have adult conversations for anything to be fixed. Rounds complaints sound like political positioning instead of anger or frustration.
No comments:
Post a Comment