The flooding in southeast Missouri and elsewhere, including the controversial levee demolition in Missouri to spare homes in Illinois and farther downstream along the Mississippi River, serves as a powerful reminder: When big rivers rise, humans have only so much control.
The current controls on the Mississippi Rivers sprang out of the massive floods of 1927, during which the river at one point was 60 miles wide and covered 14 percent of Arkansas. Hundreds died. Now we have levees to keep water in its course and several floodways, like the one now in use in southeast Missouri, to divert water as needed.
Still, it’s a rough year. The system is designed to handle very high waters on the Ohio or Mississippi rivers, but not both, and this year we have both. Even when there’s flooding along the Upper Mississippi, things usually mellow out below the confluence with the Ohio, after which the Mississippi is wider and deeper. But this year the Corps of Engineers says it’ll be a fight, for weeks, all the way to New Orleans.
Humans like to think they can tame rivers. Often they can. The biggest rivers, however, always have one more fight in them, and it’s always a mess.
Filibuster folly
A quick follow on Wednesday’s editorial: The four Missouri senators stalling on reapproving some federal stimulus money did end their filibuster.
They made their point – people are “addicted to the federal money, and they can’t say no,” said Sen. Jim Lembke, R-St. Louis – and settled for cutting $14 million instead of the $250 million they sought.
Even that $14 million is a phantom, apparently. Other state officials say that money will be spent in the current fiscal year, leaving it untouched by any votes now.
The four senators, who include Will Kraus, R-Lee’s Summit, have gotten everyone’s attention. They’re not wrong, but the place for debating Washington’s spending is Washington. States can affect that debate marginally at best. And tying up the Senate in the next-to-last week of the session, with much yet to be done, is not the best government.
