My town is flooded, people have opinions

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pioneer98
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My town is flooded, people have opinions

Post by pioneer98 »

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Rant part 1: the Mississippi River floods almost every year here now. They are usually not a big problem any more. How the city managed to keep that area above dry in the past is they had a really slick way to build a temporary levee really fast (with "Hesco barriers"). The public works director that had overseen that operation for many years was pushed out by our moronic mayor a couple years ago. The new public works director did not have the same experience level with these things. The temporary levee they built this time lasted a little over a month, and then collapsed 2 days ago. So lots of businesses are shut down and working poor people are now unemployed because of ineptitude by our city government.

Rant part 2: This always starts a debate about whether we should have a flood wall or not. I won't bore you with the details. This debate bugs the [expletive] out of me because I hear people on both sides saying ignorant and incorrect things about the situation.

Rant part 3: A Facebook friend lives in the floodplain upriver a ways in a much wealthier community. Their house gets flooded every year. They are online whining about how the community does not care about their plight (their "plight" being that they have to boat to their house I guess). This same person is a reactionary right winger who doesn't think the minimum wage should be raised, or health care be expanded, etc. So, yeah, they are totally correct that their community doesn't give a [expletive] about anyone's plight.

Gashouse
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Re: My town is flooded, people have opinions

Post by Gashouse »

I read about this and was wondering how you were doing there.

As someone who considered becoming a Certified Floodplain Manager and has worked on major flood control projects (Fargo, Minot ND, other levee projects) I am very interested in the flood wall debate even if it would bore the rest of GRB Nation. Also, I have strong opinions about folks like your FB friend in wealthy communities who push into a floodplain and then complain about getting flooded.

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IMADreamer
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Re: My town is flooded, people have opinions

Post by IMADreamer »

The river is the second highest ever here only to 93. We spent the day getting all of our equipment off the farm to high ground. Taking a break now for a meeting with officials and then we are going to get our more expensive tools out of the shop as well as all the bin fans and driers. Tonight I get a shift patrolling levees then tomorrow I'm going to help my neighbor haul his corn out he still has stored. We are going to need a miracle to hold the levee.

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Re: My town is flooded, people have opinions

Post by Freed Roger »

Good luck IMA

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Re: My town is flooded, people have opinions

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Gashouse
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Re: My town is flooded, people have opinions

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Oof Dreamer. Hoping for the best for you all.

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InvincibleCakeEater
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Re: My town is flooded, people have opinions

Post by InvincibleCakeEater »

pioneer98 wrote: Rant part 3: A Facebook friend lives in the floodplain upriver a ways in a much wealthier community. Their house gets flooded every year. They are online whining about how the community does not care about their plight (their "plight" being that they have to boat to their house I guess). This same person is a reactionary right winger who doesn't think the minimum wage should be raised, or health care be expanded, etc. So, yeah, they are totally correct that their community doesn't give a [expletive] about anyone's plight.
Just tell them that they are being punished by god for their sins.

Arthur Dent
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Re: My town is flooded, people have opinions

Post by Arthur Dent »

pioneer98 wrote:Rant part 2: This always starts a debate about whether we should have a flood wall or not. I won't bore you with the details. This debate bugs the [expletive] out of me because I hear people on both sides saying ignorant and incorrect things about the situation.
What's the anti flood wall case? Is the alternative that development of the protected areas should just be cleared out?

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Re: My town is flooded, people have opinions

Post by Freed Roger »

Places like Chesterfield Valley and Maryland Heights (Kroenke's land) should never have been developed to this extent, instead allowed to have been natural flood water reservoirs.

That article I linked above claim a lot of it starts upstream - where man channeled and straightened 200 miles off the MO primarily for barge traffic (though some hydroelectricity)-barge traffic which is practically non-existent (unlike the Mississippi).

Climate change is likely a factor. We had flooding a couple years ago in the dead of winter due to rains. springtime one would expect but never heard of winter. Winter rains, very little of it evaporates or gets soaked up by vegetation. And 93 was in the middle of summer when the big rivers typically look pretty weak.

Anyways, watched the STL news covering Winfield, Hardin County area flooding -if it's bad there, Dreamer I know it has to be bad where you are. Hope you got most everything valuable to higher ground. Tough decisions ahead for sure. I feel for you man.

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IMADreamer
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Re: My town is flooded, people have opinions

Post by IMADreamer »

Freed Roger wrote:Places like Chesterfield Valley and Maryland Heights (Kroenke's land) should never have been developed to this extent, instead allowed to have been natural flood water reservoirs.

That article I linked above claim a lot of it starts upstream - where man channeled and straightened 200 miles off the MO primarily for barge traffic (though some hydroelectricity)-barge traffic which is practically non-existent (unlike the Mississippi).

Climate change is likely a factor. We had flooding a couple years ago in the dead of winter due to rains. springtime one would expect but never heard of winter. Winter rains, very little of it evaporates or gets soaked up by vegetation. And 93 was in the middle of summer when the big rivers typically look pretty weak.

Anyways, watched the STL news covering Winfield, Hardin County area flooding -if it's bad there, Dreamer I know it has to be bad where you are. Hope you got most everything valuable to higher ground. Tough decisions ahead for sure. I feel for you man.
I think climate change is a huge part of it. I think the piss poor management of the river by the corp of engineers is another. They refuse to dredge the river and the river is filling up because of it. Thirdly it's development. Think of 1993, Chesterfield Valley was farm ground. This story is true up and down the river. Now it's miles and miles of asphalt and concrete. Farm ground retained a lot of water, it soaked in and plants used it up. Now it all runs off into the river. It's a huge problem.

Major floods on my stretch of the river were 1943, 1973, 1993, 2001, 2008, 2011, 2013, 2014. 2018, and now 2019. Things are definitely getting way worse, and it's not the levee systems fault as it's been in place since the 1920s.


Anyway, we survived the first crest. We had a major problem Saturday night when we had a huge boil on the levee, but with a whole lot of man power we stopped it. Now we are holding our breath that the heavy rain forecasted this week misses us. With last weeks rain the river raised 6ft in four days. It will fall about 3 feet before the rain starts tomorrow from the crest. However a 6ft rise this week would put us at an all time record of 32ft which we can't hold right now. So here's hoping that rain misses us.

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