Sand Bubbling Up Along Illinois Levees
By Nicole Belle Monday Jun 23, 2008 8:00pm
NY Times (reg. req'd):
Even as many found cheer that floodwaters along the Mississippi River here would fall well short of what had been predicted, residents and the authorities in this town discovered a stark reminder of what might lie ahead: a sand boil on the aged levee that protects the town, a telltale sign that the swollen river had begun eroding the structure from beneath.[..]
As the river at nearby St. Louis leveled out at around 12 feet below the record set during the 1993 flood and about two feet below what had been predicted for the weekend, investigators had identified and contained several more boils on the levee, and the marshland that sits just behind it had crept to within 100 yards of the village hall.
Last year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, after consulting with the Army Corps of Engineers, found that the five-levee system that protects the metropolitan area of East St. Louis, Ill., did not meet its standards for flood protection.[..]
(A)s cities, towns and farms north of here have yielded in the past few weeks to the Mississippi's tremendous flooding, scientists have again emphasized a sharp increase in flooding in recent history. They say established communities like East St. Louis and neighboring Cahokia would be well advised to repair their levee systems.
"We have had two almost 100-year floods and two almost 500-year floods in a 35-year period," said Nicholas Pinter, a professor who specializes in flood hydrology at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. "Flood levels all along this stretch of the Mississippi have climbed upward, not just by inches but by 8, 10, 12 feet - up to 18 feet over historical 100-year flood conditions. So the simple answer is that floods are higher and more frequent.
"But the underlying theme to everything that's going on," Dr. Pinter added, "is that the current estimates for flood frequency and intensity appear to be grossly underestimated."
Dr. Pinter maintains that while climate change and levee construction have contributed to increased flooding in the St. Louis area, the real culprits are river modifications made to ease navigation, which put further stress on the levee systems.
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Sounds like it's time to redefine "100-year flood" and "500-year flood".
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This can't be a surprise.
Back in the days of Reaganomics, it was decided (up and down the country) to save money by moving it away from maintenance and support programs. Ostensibly, just for a short time.
Trouble is, that since then, the money hasn't gone back to those maintenance programs. Either the Dems were too scared to raise the necessary taxes to fund them, or the programs that got the money were deemed more important.
In either case, it's been over 20 years now since the glorious days of Reaganomics. But it's why you'll see more and more of this sort of thing. Levees breaking, bridges collapsing, roads turning to crap, etc..
Drove my chevy to the levy and was washed away...
That whole "100- or 500-year flood" just means in any year there is a 1-in-a-hundred or 1-in-500 chance that flood waters will be that high. Here in Texas, some people really take to heart that devastating floods will only happen that infrequently because even experts like Dr. Pinter talk about flooding events in those terms.
Under my tinfoil umbrella the theory is that all the water from the melting polar caps has already entered the weather system. The warming waters evaporate into the atmosphere at a much higher rate these days, generating stronger and wetter storm cycles. The levies were never designed to withstand this kind of flooding. As God said to Noah: "How long can you tread water?" (:>
Where's the Goddidit crowd now? Oh, wait, I guess it's only God when a natural disaster hits a major city.
Come on you wannabe Christian cowards, come out of your hiding places, the real Christians would like to say something to you...
the army corps. of engineers has for all practical purposes been decomissioned.
The only levy I know is the Levy who lives down the block!
Rain in the area today
General_Rennenkampf @ 6:
There were no gay pride parades scheduled for Iowa. Not saying much now, are they?
Gretchen @ 10:
Nope. Those types seem to think Yahweh only cares about gays.....
Then BAM! A natural disaster hits them, hard. Not to get the atheists on this site upset, but it seems somebody's unhappy with the Bush Administration, and has been so for a good lil' bit.
But hey, it's just East St. Louis, a city whose residents are mostly poor and black. We know how much this government cares about people matching that description.
I lived in Iowa in 1993--the last 500 year flood of record. The Army Corps of Engineers has been making bad decisions for years or has been under funded to do what everyone agrees needs to be done to maintain the levees. This year, they said in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids they hadn't had the money to repair known weaknesses in the levees. In New Orleans, Bush personally cut funds to flood protection there for 3 years in a row. Stupid. Grover Norquist needs to be jailed for destroying this country. He is the little man behind the curtain of this evil government and nobody does anything about it.
General_Rennenkampf @ 11:
Actually, that's what my pastor said. Didn't name names because he won't preach politics, but did urge us to draw any parallels we liked when we discussed Daniel 11. Interesting chapter.
Gretchen @ 14:
Indeed. I personally think Dubya's using the name of Jesus as a suckerpoint to the Evangelical crowd displeased the Man Upstairs, and irony of ironies, the Bible-thumpers think the Man Upstairs is displeased with their enemies. Yahweh does not tolerate people misusing his name, so Dubya's administration may have far more natural disasters to come, and we've had more than our share in this USA over the last 4 years.
enough @ 13:
500 year flood, huh? Man, time flies.
Seriously, I agree with you on Norquist and friends. This is what we get when we stand by as they kill governments while reaping record profits. What's the line from Taxi Driver? Maybe, "Thank God for the rain to wash the trash off the sidewalk." Norquist is trash.
the army corp of engineers have turned the mississippi river into a barge canal.
Nicole I luv ya, but the sand bubbling up headline doesn't carry the story. my wife is from alton and we are celebrating the fact that the water will be no where near the 93 benchmark at the Peavy. it is scarey enough..don't play politics with this flood.........................yet.............until folks are out of danger
"Sounds like it’s time to redefine “100-year flood” and “500-year flood”."
Indeed.
Five hundred years ago the midwest was blanketed with marshes and prairies. Sponges that absorbed the rain. All the prairies are gone and the marshes are few.
Raw croplands and pavement hold little if any water.
Aldo Leopold wrote that one of the penalties of an ecological education was that one "lives alone in a world of wounds." -Sand County Almanac.
All the beautiful trout streams and bass streams here in southern Wisconsin have gone to crap. Buried under sediments from the continual erosion. I had 25 streams in my area - beautiful, spring fed limestone streams teaming with wild fish --all crapped out.
The white man's burden is the white man.
Sanjiv Sarwate @ 12:
Good point. Where is FEMA nowadays? Hardly a mention is made about that bunch.
Norquist lives a few miles from me, the main strategist for the Looter Class. Every state has horrific infrastructure problems as an aspect of this unprecedented wealth theft.
Summer is yet barely upon us. Hurricane season has hardly revved up. There is no reason to suppose that the formation of huge super cell rain storms will suddenly cease over the corn belt and with the stretch of weakened levees further stressed, any coming deluges will likely be catastrophic.
Look to the next 5 months to contain nothing but disasters and bad news on nearly all fronts, economy, natural disasters, the two wars and what have you.Kansas, you are probably on deck.
matx @ 4, errrrrrr..... I don't have a degree in probability but wouldn't that work out the same? That a 1 in 100 chance every year means a 1 in 1 chance every 100 years basicly?
General_Rennenkampf @ 6:
The bible wonks only count hits and disregard the misses. Sort of like a gambling addict.
tr @ 17:
CoIntelPro for Pronktastic Democratic Party Victory Over DIEBOLD! @ 7:
pat of wheaton @ 18:
the politics is being played by your photo-op presnitwit.
MAC @ 23:
Or a heroin addict. Though I've heard the misses are pretty painful.
Terrible @ 22:
nope, not the same thing. just because it doesn't happen in a given year doesn't increase the chance it will happen in the next year. the 1/100 probability is just that, a probability, drawn from observations of past events.
Terrible @ 22:
Nope, it means that in any given year the odds of a "100 year flood" are 100:1 against. If I remember my
sadisticser, I mean statistics correctly, the odds of zero 100 year floods during a 100 year period is (1 - 0.01) to the 100th power, or about 37%.As for the odds of two 0.01 probability floods and two 0.002 probability floods occurring in such a short period - well, it's always possible. However, if it were a dice game, I'd suspect loaded dice. Here, the environment is quite a bit different than it was 100 years ago, let alone 500 years ago, so the odds were calculated using suspect data. (For example, there were more floodplains to buffer the water flow. We've also got better drainage in the fields and cities, so the rain all goes into the river at once. The increased number of levees combined with improved drainage means the floodwaters get much higher much faster.
Meanwhile, developers keep building houses in the floodplains while touting improved levees at "500-year flood" levels, griping about intrusive government regulations trying to stop them, and indignation that their refusal to pay taxes on their profits meant insufficient funds for government assistance when the levees fail.
What we need to do is to restrict floodplains to farming only, buy "flooding rights" to farms next to the river, and design levees that divert excess flow to those farms. The farmers get some extra money each year, and if their fields flood, the cities they protected can pay them for their lost crops.
Just glanced at the NOAA satellite image, yikes, another huge super cell storm formation is right on top of the area that just got soaked and another huge one is over the headwater zone in Minnesota.
Summer has only begun. Tere will continue to be lots of water vapor to feed these things for the rest of the season.
This is strictly coincidence, but Eas S. Louis, is predominantly Afro American. Sound familiar? And by the way. Huffington Post, FUCK YOU. I just posted my opinion, with not one swear word, about the disgusting bush family, and it was rejected because it was not appropriate. Ariana is morphing into a card carring member of the CORPORATE MEDIA. Ironic, the beauty of free speech, that made HP, is now taboo. And by the way, Ariana, FUCK YOU.
Has anyone come out and said that these red states get exactly what they deserve "from god"? Cuz, I'm not going to. (That would be uncivil.)
Edwin Hussein the appeaser @ 31:
You can't get more "Blue" than IL (and especially ST Clair County where ESL is located). I don't think anybody deserves to be ruined by a flood. Also keep in mind that (at least in SW IL where I live) there is a fair amount of responsibility for unmaintained levees on the locals who shoot down tax measures to increase funding to the levee district. Around here schools have the same problem. But at least we managed to keep a Wal-mart here by giving them a massive tax break for the next decade.
Edwin Hussein the appeaser @ 31:
Maybe you were talking about Iowa. FYI, Cedar Rapids is also in a heavily Democratic county.
Instead of Bush demanding that god bless America [we have enough blessings for a life time already] maybe he can get some other country [preferably from the Middle East] to lay waste to the infastructure of the flood devastated areas, then they will spend hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild it?
mrsaluki @ 33:
I'm just --kinda-- saying. There are lots of liberals in New Orleans and NYC too, but...
matx @ 4:
If there have been two 100 year and two 500 year floods in the last 35 years, then clearly the odds of floods that large happening in any year are much, much greater than one in 100. The statistic is no longer a meaningful predictor.
John @ 2:
I went to School at Michigan State (many years ago) and lived in Lansing. We had a flood situation and I was walking through the woods along a levee, being awed by the rushing water, when I noticed water coming out the other side of the levee in an increasing gush. Turned out it was a muskrat hole and was pretty common. As I stood there, since there was nothing that could be done, in a matter of ten minutes the levee was washed through and a huge hole eroded by the flood waters. Parts of Lansing eventually were flooded (not just from this breach). This was the result of no maintenance and faith that since the levee looked okay, the levee was. Also, to many peoples' surprise, storm drains that flowed into the river reversed under flooding conditions and water bubbled (actually shot) out of the drains, adding to the flood.
Here is a link to help to the reason/explanation for 100-year floodplain. The information is from a US Army Corps of Engineers brochure:
http://floodsafety.com/national/property/risk/index.htm
Thank you to taochiapet @27 and RepubAnon @28 for clarifying my earlier post.
No matter how Bush responds to natural disasters since Katrina, his non-response to the plight of New Orleans will always be the shyt-stain on the white rug in the living room. He will never live that down, no matter how many positive responses he gives. It will always be "If he'd done that with Katrina victims..."
You just can't make up colossal screw-ups like that without them looking asshat.
When Barak ends this war, we will have hundred's of thousands unemployed with no jobs to go to since bushco shipped them all out of the country. We need Barak to start a civilian job corp (like Roosevelts) and have those men and women work on our infrastuctur. Otherwise the wars end will bring a greater unemployement then ever....that's why the repuklicans haven't wanted to end the war they know that they have no jobs for the soldiers waiting here...and don't forget the more than double amount of civilian soldiers there too that will need work. Blackwater should be made illegal, one cannot have a civilian army bigger than our national army, it should be illegal! Then we should prosecute and jail the bushies since it's too late to impeach because pelosi and reid are pussies bushies too.
$300 million? The oil companies would pay 10 times as much to buy the blueprints and destroy them.
Marty @ 19:
Thank you. It's all about wetlands. That's natures way of taking care of things when rivers decide to leave their banks. The same thing has been happening in my neck of the Midwest also. Places that never flooded before now flood with regularity and leave a mess when the water goes down. Why? Because the wetlands are being destroyed so they can build more condos, apartment buildings, shopping malls and roads to get to them. The funny thing about the condos though...they are being built left and right, then they just set empty. What's up with that?
hooray for 'progress'!
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