Mississippi Flooding Demands New Management Strategy
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[The Mississippi River flows through the heart of our nation. It nourishes 18 million of us with its freshwater channels, it gives us a place to play along its banks and it gives us hope that future generations can continue to live and thrive in the heartland, even during years of record floods. But the rules we use to manage modern floods were written almost thirty years ago.
The federal document that gives guidance on dams, levees and other water projects that influence the flow of the Mississippi is called Principles and Guidelines. They were last updated in 1983. Today, the Obama administration has an enormous opportunity to fix the mistakes we've been making since 1983.
"We've been making the same mistakes over and over," said Paul Orr, the Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. "Instead of our overreliance on levees and dams, we need to require that new federal water projects and investments protect and restore the floodplains and wetlands of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and their tributaries."
While levees and floodwalls make sense in heavily populated areas, their overuse causes flood levels to rise as the river channel is narrowed and water has nowhere to go but up - making flooding worse for communities downstream. Levees should be our last line of defense, not our only line of defense.
The Mississippi River Network, a coalition of 37 organizations dedicated to protecting the land, water and people of the Mississippi River basin, advocates better management alternatives that include improved water storage through restoration of wetlands and floodplains upstream.
"Our hearts go out to all those affected by these floods," said Jennifer Browning, manager of the Mississippi River Network. "Whether they are flooded because of a blown levee or because of the sheer volume of water, the devastation is heartbreaking."
The floods of 2011 will be remembered by both the victims and government officials for generations. But, they will not be the last floods to devastate the area or challenge how we manage, protect and restore the river. The Mississippi River Network urges federal and local governments to give top priority to non-structural, natural approaches to reduce flooding from storms. The Network calls for a national, strategic approach to protecting and restoring the entire basin. As the federal water resources planning principles and guidelines are currently being revised, this is the perfect opportunity to adopt a plan selection process that protects public health and safety and restores environmental resources by abandoning the current reliance on benefit-cost analysis as the fundamental driver for federal water resources planning and requires the use of less environmentally damaging alternatives, including nonstructural, water efficiency and restoration approaches.
The spring floods of 2011 are surpassing the great floods of 1927 in many record books. The 1927 flood damage resulted in the first comprehensive flood control plan in the United States. This plan included the building of levees up and down the River to control floodwaters-levees like the one at Birds Point. The engineered system protects a 35,000-square-mile stretch of land from Cairo in the north to the Louisiana delta.
"Healthy rivers are great assets and give communities so many benefits, including clean water and natural flood protection," said Glynnis Collins, Executive Director of Prairie Rivers Network. "The Great Flood of 2011 is a clear reminder that we need to learn how to work with the river rather than against it. If we don't protect and restore the Mississippi and all of our rivers, then public safety, the economy and the environment all suffer serious consequences."
Wetlands filter pollutants, absorb excess rainwater and reduce flooding by acting as a giant sponge. Flooding in 1993 caused an estimated $16 billion in damages. Scientists estimate that returning lands in the Upper Mississippi River basin to their original form-wetlands-would significantly reduce future flooding.
Prairie Rivers Network, Mississippi River Corridor - Tennessee and the Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper are all members of the Mississippi River Network, a coalition of organizations working to protect the land, water and people of the Mississippi River. The Network works with an ever-growing number of River Citizens through its 1 Mississippi program. River Citizens are dedicated to learning more about their River and taking action to protect it.