STL Today (St. Louis): From his fourth-floor cubicle next to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' emergency operations center in downtown St. Louis, engineer Matt Hunn keeps an eye on the Missouri River. Using graphs, maps, phone and email, Mr. Hunn serves as one of the region's chief flood fighters. Lately, he's been busy.Every day, he and numerous other state and federal officials from several agencies map out a plan to fight what is quickly becoming the historic flood of 2011. Just don't call it the "Great Flood," Mr. Hunn said. "There's nothing great about it."
To engineers like Mr. Hunn, floods provide an important data point. Each one is different from the last, responding to constantly changing variables. Some are out of our control; others are not. After the 1993 flood that wreaked havoc in this region, Mr. Hunn remembered a great hue and cry for better flood-control measures across the Missouri River basin. But the energy dissipated as the water receded. "From my perspective, you've got a two- to four-year window," Mr. Hunn said. "People forget."
That is why now is the time, as the floodwater still is high in the northern basin and is heading our way, to begin a serious discussion about improving the flood-control measures and the overall management of the multi-state Missouri River basin. River historian Robert Kelley Schneiders, author of "Unruly River: Two Centuries of Change along the Missouri," endorses the concept of "democratizing" Missouri River management. "I think the river can be a lot more than it is right now for a lot more people," Mr. Schneiders said.
...How do we get there? Based on our conversations with veterans of river management debates over the past couple of decades, we offer three suggestions as a starting point: Widen the river, reduce risk and put navigation in its proper context....
Eppley Airfield in Omaha on June 16, 2011 during 2011 Missouri River floods. US Army Corps of Engineers
No comments:
Post a Comment