Free Republic

To paraphrase, the arroyo to hell is paved with good intentions, illegally dumped garbage, dead trees and underbrush. Just ask Peter and Françoise Smith. They had the audacity to clear debris out of the arroyo on their property behind their home, off N.M. 14 southwest of Santa Fe. Peter Smith says “people dumped garbage down there, and there was a beetle infestation that took out a lot of the piñon.” He says the estimated 600 dead trees presented a fire hazard and the non-native “salt cedar was getting to the point it was so thick you couldn’t walk through it....

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As record floodwaters along the Missouri River drench homes and businesses, concerns have grown about keeping a couple of notable structures dry: two riverside nuclear power plants in Nebraska. Though the plants have declared “unusual events,” the lowest level in the emergency taxonomy used by federal nuclear regulators, both were designed to withstand this level of flooding, and neither is viewed as being at risk for a disaster, said a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “We think they’ve taken all the necessary precautions and made the appropriate arrangements to deal with the flooding conditions,” said...

With drought threatening food production in the EU, US and China, analysts at Renaissance Capital believe the next 8-10 weeks will be crucial to prices in 2011 and 2012. “The food price threat for 2011-2012 is very significant, but may disappear in August. It depends entirely on the weather over May to July,” said Renaissance Capital’s Charles Robertson. “If we do not get the right mix of rain and sun in the coming 8-10 weeks, then later this year we will see record price levels for the most important cereal in the world today – corn,” he said. If this...

The Army Corps. opened the Morganza spillway on the Mississippi River in Louisiana on Saturday forcing tons of water and covering more than 100 acres of dry land with a foot of water within 30 minutes. The flood gates were opened to shift the flow of the swollen river away from the numerous oil refineries and chemical plants in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. While the flood waters will move away from the more densely populated area, the opening of the gates could affect 25,000 people, 11,000 structures, and acres of farmland. This is the first time the Morganza spillway...

The Mississippi River has topped a levee north of Lake Providence in extreme northeast Louisiana, flooding croplands as an effort by farmers to shore up the 100-year-old structure was thwarted by the rising river. About 12,000 acres behind the 18-mile-long levee, mostly planted in corn and soybeans, were flooding Thursday morning though no homes appeared to be in danger in the thinly populated area. Maintenance on the levee was abandoned years ago after another, higher levee was built farther back off the river.

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (AP) - A federal judge is giving the go-ahead to the Army Corps of Engineers' plan to intentionally break a Mississippi River levee in southeastern Missouri. The break could happen as early as this weekend to spare a flood-threatened Illinois town just upriver. Friday's ruling in Cape Girardeau turns back Missouri's bid to block the corps from blasting a hole in the Birds Point levee in Mississippi County, just south of Cairo, Ill. Missouri argued the floodwaters would ruin farmland and damage about 100 homes.

Iraqi laborers erect a steel power transmission tower to hold overhead power lines for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineer project near Al Nasiriyah, Iraq. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Mohammed Aliwi U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Brings More Electricity Near Iraq New power line should modernize transmission, increase local area jobs. By Mohammed Aliwi Corps of Engineers Gulf Region South District DHI QAR, Iraq, April 17, 2007 — In an effort to reduce electrical outages and modernize distribution before the summer heat boosts air conditioning demands, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is working on a...