Corps of Engineers is smarter than our water authority who refused to drain ours when they knew a week to 10 days out that the waters were coming. 40+ feet and they took no responsibility for the lives, homes and property that was lost last October.
There were two ways to get into town. Two of those across bridges. They let the wall of water take out one bridge. People had to drive an extra hour to get a gallon of milk or get their kids to school or to work. If they had a work to go to after so many businesses were closed.
I KNEW they could drain the water because they did it 40 some years ago. If they could do it then, they certainly could do it today. It’s 90 feet deep here and they drained it so low that us kids could hop across the boulders to the other side. Great fun!
But nooooo. They sit behind their computers a couple hours away and pick lint from their belly buttons and fine people who can’t get already booked up crews to come in and haul off debris.
I understand your point and agree about the function of the Corps. Lake Okeechobee is less that 20 feet deep and represents a substantial portion of the fresh water supply for South Florida. Because of the fragility of the levee system, the level is reduced to something like 12 feet when we have approach tropical storms and/or hurricanes. The level of the lake is lowered by releasing millions of gallons of stored water through man-made canals which eventually end up in either the Atlantic or the Gulf. In drought years, the absence of this water is reflected in water-use restriction galore. My only point was, fix the levees around Lake Okeechobee and store more water.