“The land was flooded intentionally to save a minority community elsewhere. Others who know better will hopefully correct or confirm my post.”
Interestingly, these areas are called Flood Plains for a reason and the reason they are called Flood Plains is that these plains are used for controlled flooding as opposed to having uncontrolled floods in densely populated areas.
That system worked this year along the Missouri River and also worked down in Louisiana along the Mississippi River where spillways constructed 60 years ago were utilized to save Baton Rouge and New Orleans from flooding.
These flood control systems function well and save the American tax payer billions upon billions of dollars.
I’m not sure some folks here are getting the full implication here.
The land we’re talking about here—Missouri River bottomland—is some of the richest and most productive agricultural land in the world. Among the justifications for the mainstem dams on the Missouri River was precisely to prevent exactly the kind of flooding which is now occurring.
Does that clarify things a bit?
I don’t know if the conspiracy allegation is true. I do know it is plausible. (i.e. there are means, motive and opportunity . . . )
Say what you will about Colin Powell, but he had a point when he said “you break it, you own it.”
New Deal-type big-government Federal flood control projects broke the natural flooding cycle of the Missouri. This encouraged a LOT of non-agricultural development in the bottomlands of the Missouri valley, which were bottomlands precisely because they did regularly flood. That is exactly what made them so agriculturally productive.
The Corps of Engineers and the Federal Government own (as in are completely and totally responsible for) what happens in the Missouri River valley now.
When big-government programs fail, they fail catastrophically. And I do not use the word “catastrophically” lightly.
The Missouri River mainstem dam system has failed. Catastrophically.
And the New Deal, big-government mindset is to blame.
What you describe is true, but I do not believe it accurately explains the factors at work here. First, as I understand it, the area saved was not densely populated, but a small community of about 2400 people. Second, the whole problem may have been avoided. Read post 21 for more details.