>
> It's very reasonable to put your farm fields in the flood plain. It's
> also reasonable to have a dock on the river to load and unload boats.
> But putting your house and business on the flood plain or on the beach
> in hurricane territory is just asking for trouble.
Or living where there are earthquakes, fires, mudslides, volcanoes, tidal
waves, tornadoes, termites, extreme cold climates, extreme hot climates,
extreme rainy climates, extreme dry climates, sand, rock, bees, bugs,
spiders and snakes should also be outlawed.
One can be critical of locating a town within a floodplain, and at first
glance it does seem a bit stupid. But when you consider the infrastructure
which is designed to protect it, it's not unreasonable. Historically,
floods do occur in these locations, but the work that is being done on the
Red River this week to protect the towns is exactly how things are supposed
to work. The levies are just fine for all of the normal, expected flooding,
and when the river is exceeding "normal" highs, people are doing what they
can to protect their homes and businesses. The infrastructure allows for
the raising of the levies under these extreme times and the sandbagging
technology--as crude as it may seem, is actually pretty good.
The catastrophes happen when the infrastructure fails! But how is this any
different than when any other infrastructure fails? Water mains
break--should we outlaw city water? Electrical shorts cause fires--should
be outlaw electricity? Bridges fail--should we outlaw transportation?
Maybe we should outlaw airlines because of geese.
Let's put this into perspective, though. The flooding currently experienced
on the Red River is EXTREME. This isn't normal flood levels--these are
levels which have never been seen by white man--and there are examples of
native communities which were also destroyed by floods, so they didn't
always get it right, either. The previous flood, back in the '90s, was a
result of the levies not being high enough and the sandbagging operation
wasn't able to make up the difference. Since that time, the levies were
raised, improved and redesigned for times such as this. The fact that the
levies have held so far is testament to this success. Even at that, the
levies are designed to hold these extremely high waters for only a week to
two weeks before seepage finally weakens the levies enough that they can
fail. (But compare this to the levy failures in New Orleans which occured
immediately).
This flooding is NOT normal--just as a category five hurricane hitting a
major coastal city and then causing massive flooding as far north and west
as Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ontario isn't normal.
AG
--
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