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Herring: Stopping the Flood
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July 30, 2010
Herring: Stopping the Flood
By Hal Herring
The first thing I thought of when I read the story about Iowa’s Lake Delhi dam break was how interesting it would be to see what monster fish were stranded in those shallow waters between the mud flats…but I know this was a tragedy for those who had (and lost) homes around the lake and for those who loved to fish it.
As I read the story, though, it occurred to me just how many of these “record rain events” and “catastrophic floods” we have been experiencing across the US. Why so many, and why are the costs- for just one example, the Nashville floods in May this year have cost an estimated $1 billion- going through the roof?
An answer can be found in the Associated Press story about the Delhi Lake dam break:
"More water came down than ever had been planned before," he said. "Things were different when it was built, the watersheds were different, field drainage was different, we're working with a situation that the designers of the dam couldn't have foreseen." End Quote
Indeed we are, and not just at Lake Delhi. In the US today, we are filling wetlands, clearing forests along creeks, channelizing creeks, building dikes along rivers, entombing thousands upon thousands of acres under impermeable surfaces - concrete, asphalt, the parking lot at the new super-store, etc. These projects are killing off our wildlife, ruining our fishing, poisoning our waters with run-off, flooding our homes, sucking away billions of taxpayer dollars, and strangling our economy with ever increasing insurance costs. In essence, you and I are paying to destroy our own fishing and hunting and water quality, and then paying again when those projects result in catastrophic floods that should have never happened. And it will get worse, much worse, if we continue on the path we are on now, forever reacting to the consequences of our ignorance, and never trying to create a proactive solution.
It is not as if there are no answers. In 1998, after years of research following the disastrous Midwest floods of 1993, a team from the National Wildlife Federation released a study called Higher Ground which concluded that one-time, voluntary buyouts of properties that have been flooded over and over would be a more cost-effective means of dealing with flooding than the continued diking, damming and channelizing that make the problem worse, and cost more billions every year in insurance costs and federal and state disaster funds (some of them spent to rebuild the homes and businesses in the bull’s eye floodplain that took them in the first place).
Simply put: you take the money you would have spent killing our watersheds and the public money used to rebuild wrecked homes in places where they will soon be wrecked again, and you offer the people living and working in those floodplains a market-value price for their property. It’s a voluntary plan- no one in the floodplain has to sell unless they want to. The goal is to create a buffer zone- restore the natural floodplains- along our creeks and rivers. You protect the waters from run-off that way, enhance fish and wildlife habitat, and you increase public access to fishing and hunting and open spaces. You save billions in disaster relief and insurance payouts in the future. You protect drinking water supplies and prevent increasing flood damage downstream. For those who would cry “socialism!” I ask this: which is more socialistic: to offer taxpayer money to landowners in a willing buyer-willing seller relationship, one time, saving taxpayer money for generations to come, or continue to use billions in taxpayer money, year after year to subsidize the destruction of our rivers, and to pay for development that will have to be replaced, at taxpayer expense, over and over?
It is a mystery to me why our country has not embraced this plan wholeheartedly. It is as if we simply cannot accomplish the things that are most important, while we quibble endlessly and energetically about the useless and the inane. There is a price for that failure. I’d rather my children did not have to pay it. --Hal Herring
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Comments (14)
And as far as the thousands of acres encased in asphalt, there's another option as well: permeable pavement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permeable_paving --> has some information about it. Basically, it allows water to seep through the pavement, thereby minimizing runoff. Just another tool we can use to limit our impact on our waterways that so far hasn't really caught on...
Sustainability is for stupid liberal hippies, Hal.
Weather patterns are changing as the climate heats up. Some places get wetter, some places get dryer.
People always like to live near water, shore frontage always gets a premium in the market, but with "hundred year" floods coming so often you kinda have to reevaluate things. People shouldn't live on floodplains anyway, good bottomland should always be saved for agriculture. It takes a century to recover arable land after people have left houses on it and in the long run good farmland is more valuable than suburban houselots. Topsoil is precious and you can't eat lawn.
Sustainability is not just for "leftist hippies", sustainability has to become a guiding ideal, lest we irresponsibly consume ourselves into a wasteland. Want an example of short term stupid that leaves wasteland in it's wake, look at mountaintop removal. Then look at what happens to peoples property after hydrofracking for gas recovery. There are entire towns that are now uninhabitable because of the damage done by hydrofracking. Seen the video of the guy lighting his kitchen faucet on fire?
Sustainable living is about stewardship over the resources available and utilizing them to the benefit of all, rather than a greedy and rapacious few. Besides sustainability is really cheaper in the long run and builds wealth rather than fritters it away, it is the opposite, the way of conspicuous consumption for it's own sake that is foolish and short sighted. Conspicuous consumption and "keeping up with the Joneses" are what have driven a lot of otherwise sensible Americans into the poorhouse. But if you can put the common good ahead of your own enormous ego, you'll find a happier saner life, because nobody is an island and selfishness isolates human beings like no other force. What you give comes back 3 fold. What you hoard, you waste.
Bella, honestly, have you not read me on here before? Catch the facetiousness you did not.
I find it fascinating that the Human Errors, Land Grabs, Government Errors, etc. are concentrated where the living is easy.
On my cross-country bicycle tour, I couldn't help notice the lack of people living in West Texas.
It is beautiful country.
Tens of thousands of square miles, with nobody living there.
People like to crowd where the living is easy and make the human errors and butt heads.
Wiser souls than myself have drawn comparisons of Humans to a Herd of Sheep.
They compete, not to fight, but kill each other to get to the center of the herd, leaving the losers to provide food for the wolves.
People flock to populated areas and ignore the best technical advice and exterminate themselves.
Also, let's not forget the Corporate Drunken Lemmings of Dilbertian Fame.
Lets get some things straight first before the real political issue is raised. First off this has to do more with people living in areas they know do or will flood in the foreseable future. Common sense (which is hard to come by these days) should show that if you live on the edge of a lake, river, creek, ect... it will without a doubt flood one day. Yes this dam was built years ago by a few hard workers and engineers that did not have the ability to foresee future flood ravages this dam sustained. A few questions need to be answered about this before we go blaming every Tom, Dick, and Harry for this catastrophe.In the past several years how many waterways were redirected to flow into this lake? And for what reason? Most importantly what brain whiz looked into diverting excessive amounts of water into this lake without ensuring the capability of the lake and dam?
Now if you build your dream house or vacation getaway along waterfornt it is your problem to fix it once it is flooded or destroyed not the governments. At what time did it become everyones problem to rebuild a home or city in a flood prone area?
In the past several years the EPA and government has done some really good things to help prevent these sorts of things. Epa requires detention on developed ares greater than or equal to 1ac development. They require these new projects to reduce the runoff to equall that of what it was before. So the argument of all these developed areas creating more runoff is false. To add to that part of the requirements for those detainages is to filter the water by allowing sediment and chemicals to settle to the bottom prior to leaving the site that is being detained. They do this several ways to complicated to type up, for me to make it make sense, but I would suggest you go to your local EPA website and readup on all the requirements that are in law now to help waterways from pollutants and floods. They also require you to rebuild wetlands if you encroach on them. The place all of this goes wrong is natural storm water drainage as Hal suggests. Municipalities divert natural watersheds for convience purposes rather than leaving them intact. Parking lots and large buildings aren't to blame for this because they by law are not allowed to create more runoff and in fact most of the times decrease the amount of runoff over a 24 hour period on said properties. I deal with these issues on a daily basis in my job with a contractor. As I mentioned above about the pollutants, we are required to detain/retain water in developed ares to reduce pollution of natural watersheds. It lately has been forgotten what these ponds are used for around our towns and cities. There was an article several months back on F&S about a city I believe in MN that has tested several local ponds in housing developments that had high levels of pollutants in the sediment at the bottom of these ponds. Well that is good because that is what these ponds were intended to do, but now we have people not understanding what they are and why they are created, who want us to now do something about it. My point is we can only do so much before we tie our hands behind our backs, and limit what people can and can't do.
As suggested by Bella flood plains should be left for agricultural reasons rather than building on. I must correct her, it doesn't take centuries for farm land to recover once a house or another building is developed on the land. Mother nature is something you must fight everyday to keep her from taking what you have created. Concrete is broke down constantly by Ms. Nature, along with just about every other building material. Some are more easily broke down than others but she will take it from you if you don't fight her, thats how many people make a living in some form of maintainence. Also topsoil is precious but it never goes anywhere it is just moved from here to there, just like water. Their was a show on the Discovery channel that was about armegedon that proved it would only take 25yrs for New York City to be completely covered by vegetation. The buildings had fell within 10yrs and only remains were left. I don't think it was spot on but it is far closer than what anyone can imagine.
Blackdawgz, I think your refering to survival of the fittest? And those who populate the areas that provide the easiest way of life are not dumb, ignorant, or wastes, they are smart and no different than any living organism that is on this earth! If I understand what your saying is, is that people are lazy and incompetent if they live close to water and areas that provide means of producing food, than I would have to say your illinformed and maybe dillusional. I believe you mentioned before your of Native American decent? Well where do you think they choose to live? What about the people in the Biblical days? We all if oppurtunity allows live in ares that provide the easiest means necessary to live.
Shane,
I got you, man, don't worry. ;)
what mr. herring talked about is the result of humans having to mess with nature in every way possible and think there won't be repucussions. as long as we feel like we have to develope or build on every piece of land, we will have disasters. common sense.
I don't think anyone would disagree that there is over development, I'm just bringing to light some facts that go along with new and old developments, that were in conflict with some statements in the article. We won't make this another pissing match, we just need to present all the facts, not personal opinions, or hear say. I presented facts that can be backed up on any states EPA website under their storm water pollution prevention department. I must admit some states have stricter requirements but most are equal to one another so I can't speak for every state. Also cities have the ability to pass on more stringent requirements than EPA and the majority do. I think we all agree that people who build or live in flood plains or along bodies of water should be responsable for their own property and what happens to it, not the tax payers. We agree we need more conservation land, but we need to watch who has jurisdiction over that land. We need better SWPPP's that will help with flooding and pollutants making it to our water ways, but we need to evaluate what problems may arise from said plans.
I would like for everyone to research Grand Lake St. Mary's in Ohio that has a "No water contact" advisory on the lake,and why/how this lake became so polluted. It isn't because of development of any sort, but has to do with rerouting the natural watersheds off of farm land to directly flow to the lake, not allowing the earth to do the natural filtering it does. My point is this is a bigger problem than development. We try to do good things for the eviroment yet we ruin other parts of it doing so.
Dcast Yore vocabulary, reading comprehension, and composition stink today.
Guess it wuz too challenging.
I'll connect the dots...
People are social animals.
And therein lies the challenge to get into the Happy Hunting Ground.
In abandoning the Frontier for City Life, people learned to "play the game" to survive, rather than live a subsistence lifestyle.
Everybody wants to live at a higher living standard than their ability to produce.
They get into the herd mentality.
In government, if you don't go along, you will be banished from the human race.
Everybody knows it.
They will throw you under the bus and pile on after it's gone.
Got some experience there.
They lie.
Any engineer who does not go along with their foolishness is banned for life .
Blacklisted.
Blackmail, extortion, kickbacks and whopping lies are what government is all about.
It is clear to me that, after all the graft and corruption, there wuz not enough funding to build the dam properly.
The construction industry doesn't care.
Everybody lies and moves on and records are lost.
If engineers couldn't build a damn, this kind of thing would happen every time it rains.
No, this is merely another occurence similar to the space shuttle disaster.
Your libelous comments are unwarranted.
I'll throttle back on my writing style and spell it out for the uneducated and inexperienced.
You have to remember that those in power can exercize some influence over the press.
They are today quoting the BP executives as saying that they would not hesitate to feed Gulf seafood to their families.
It is irresponsible to even print this because a large majority of people are skimming and are certain to not interpret it correctly.
And there is a lot of unintentionally incorrect information in the press as well.
To digress into your "native American" area, everybody who wuz born here is a Native American.
There wuz a story on Jim Thorpe, World's Greatest Athlete on one of the news pages a couple of days ago.
They called him a Sac and Fox.
He wuz actually little more of an Indian than I am.
His grandfather Thorpe wuz pure Irish.
He had a French great-grandmother.
This makes him 5/8 Indian.
Race should not be an issue.
Another American Hero and Two-Time World Martial Arts Champion who is racially mixed is Chuck Norris.
He had two Irish grandparents and two Native Grandparents.
Nobody goes around calling him a Indian.
I read his autobigraphy.
He actually stopped his Jeep and asked for directions to a certain actress's house while I wuz walking The Gypsy (rest her soul) during a snowstorm in the Montana Rockies.
He has a great attitude: Never Look Back!
He came up from total poverty to be a household word.
But it doesn't bother me.
I am a Christian, and I aspire to the requirements of the God of the Jews.
The problem with the damn is that it failed due to social issues, not engineering.
Politics and emotions ruled the day.
Anytime there is a government-funded disaster, all you have to do to find out What Went Wrong is to account for all money spent.
Usually, all records are re-written or lost.
But a sharp accountant can usually get to the bottom of it.
I apologize for leaving too much room for misinterpretation.
I'll not comment on a Social Issues Blog again, including this one!!!
But I guess I have one more observation as I'm riding away...
It seems as if the Indians and Irish have a tendency to mix DNA.
I have a Redskin grandfather and an Irish grandmother.
Probably their love for alcoholic beverage.
Got two Buds cooling for dinnertime right now.
Not just because I'm a bad cook.
But it's Summertime!
C-ya!
Blackdawgz, Sorry I'm not an english major, and that it offends you! Anyways your first post reads differently to me, maybe because I'm an idiot and not an english major! As for your other post I'm not sure where all the useless knowledge come into play? I remember on another topic how you said you were Native American and gave everyone a history lesson on it. I was just explaining to back up the point that people live where living is easy, not one race is inferior to another. I think if you read my other posts you would realize we're not to different in views ourselves.
As for the engineering of this dam, I seriously doubt it was their fault. This dam was constructed in the 20's when engineers didn't have the technology and know how we do today. This dam was probably at the end of its life anyway, and was ready to be replaced. I'm sure the engineers didn't have the foresight to know there was going to be more water dumped into this lake than the dam was designed for along with a massive flood on top of that. Engineering is much like history in the fact that we learn from past mistakes, or I should say we should learn from past mistakes.
The construction industry has more regulations than most other industries, and I doubt it was their fault either. Once again it was built in the 20's. If you don't believe me on the regulations on the construction industry read the IBC, NEC, ADAAG, AISC, ASTM, and the hundreds of other codes and regs. My point is that there was nothing that was going to keep this dam intact as it was designed and built too. Their maybe fault at the local government level for not seeing the future chance of a catastrophic failure, because of age and design. We have no control over Mother Nature and events such as this. We can only try to prevent it from happening. It failed from 10" of rain in 12 hr period which is probably a 500yr flood for that area, you would have to get flood plans from the state to know for sure. In short this was going to happen sooner or later, and it should be rebuilt to todays standards to ensure it may not happen again in the future. I would have to make an educated guess and say most dams built in that period that are still in working condition could not withstand that amount of rain in that short of a period, and if they did another part of the lake would have to give to be able to handle that additional water flow.
blackdawgz
Keep writing, you expressed my very thoughts. You cut thure the BS and told the truth.
Post a Comment
Weather patterns are changing as the climate heats up. Some places get wetter, some places get dryer.
People always like to live near water, shore frontage always gets a premium in the market, but with "hundred year" floods coming so often you kinda have to reevaluate things. People shouldn't live on floodplains anyway, good bottomland should always be saved for agriculture. It takes a century to recover arable land after people have left houses on it and in the long run good farmland is more valuable than suburban houselots. Topsoil is precious and you can't eat lawn.
Sustainability is not just for "leftist hippies", sustainability has to become a guiding ideal, lest we irresponsibly consume ourselves into a wasteland. Want an example of short term stupid that leaves wasteland in it's wake, look at mountaintop removal. Then look at what happens to peoples property after hydrofracking for gas recovery. There are entire towns that are now uninhabitable because of the damage done by hydrofracking. Seen the video of the guy lighting his kitchen faucet on fire?
Sustainable living is about stewardship over the resources available and utilizing them to the benefit of all, rather than a greedy and rapacious few. Besides sustainability is really cheaper in the long run and builds wealth rather than fritters it away, it is the opposite, the way of conspicuous consumption for it's own sake that is foolish and short sighted. Conspicuous consumption and "keeping up with the Joneses" are what have driven a lot of otherwise sensible Americans into the poorhouse. But if you can put the common good ahead of your own enormous ego, you'll find a happier saner life, because nobody is an island and selfishness isolates human beings like no other force. What you give comes back 3 fold. What you hoard, you waste.
Sustainability is for stupid liberal hippies, Hal.
I find it fascinating that the Human Errors, Land Grabs, Government Errors, etc. are concentrated where the living is easy.
On my cross-country bicycle tour, I couldn't help notice the lack of people living in West Texas.
It is beautiful country.
Tens of thousands of square miles, with nobody living there.
People like to crowd where the living is easy and make the human errors and butt heads.
Wiser souls than myself have drawn comparisons of Humans to a Herd of Sheep.
They compete, not to fight, but kill each other to get to the center of the herd, leaving the losers to provide food for the wolves.
People flock to populated areas and ignore the best technical advice and exterminate themselves.
Also, let's not forget the Corporate Drunken Lemmings of Dilbertian Fame.
Shane,
I got you, man, don't worry. ;)
Dcast Yore vocabulary, reading comprehension, and composition stink today.
Guess it wuz too challenging.
I'll connect the dots...
People are social animals.
And therein lies the challenge to get into the Happy Hunting Ground.
In abandoning the Frontier for City Life, people learned to "play the game" to survive, rather than live a subsistence lifestyle.
Everybody wants to live at a higher living standard than their ability to produce.
They get into the herd mentality.
In government, if you don't go along, you will be banished from the human race.
Everybody knows it.
They will throw you under the bus and pile on after it's gone.
Got some experience there.
They lie.
Any engineer who does not go along with their foolishness is banned for life .
Blacklisted.
Blackmail, extortion, kickbacks and whopping lies are what government is all about.
It is clear to me that, after all the graft and corruption, there wuz not enough funding to build the dam properly.
The construction industry doesn't care.
Everybody lies and moves on and records are lost.
If engineers couldn't build a damn, this kind of thing would happen every time it rains.
No, this is merely another occurence similar to the space shuttle disaster.
Your libelous comments are unwarranted.
I'll throttle back on my writing style and spell it out for the uneducated and inexperienced.
You have to remember that those in power can exercize some influence over the press.
They are today quoting the BP executives as saying that they would not hesitate to feed Gulf seafood to their families.
It is irresponsible to even print this because a large majority of people are skimming and are certain to not interpret it correctly.
And there is a lot of unintentionally incorrect information in the press as well.
To digress into your "native American" area, everybody who wuz born here is a Native American.
There wuz a story on Jim Thorpe, World's Greatest Athlete on one of the news pages a couple of days ago.
They called him a Sac and Fox.
He wuz actually little more of an Indian than I am.
His grandfather Thorpe wuz pure Irish.
He had a French great-grandmother.
This makes him 5/8 Indian.
Race should not be an issue.
Another American Hero and Two-Time World Martial Arts Champion who is racially mixed is Chuck Norris.
He had two Irish grandparents and two Native Grandparents.
Nobody goes around calling him a Indian.
I read his autobigraphy.
He actually stopped his Jeep and asked for directions to a certain actress's house while I wuz walking The Gypsy (rest her soul) during a snowstorm in the Montana Rockies.
He has a great attitude: Never Look Back!
He came up from total poverty to be a household word.
But it doesn't bother me.
I am a Christian, and I aspire to the requirements of the God of the Jews.
The problem with the damn is that it failed due to social issues, not engineering.
Politics and emotions ruled the day.
Anytime there is a government-funded disaster, all you have to do to find out What Went Wrong is to account for all money spent.
Usually, all records are re-written or lost.
But a sharp accountant can usually get to the bottom of it.
I apologize for leaving too much room for misinterpretation.
I'll not comment on a Social Issues Blog again, including this one!!!
But I guess I have one more observation as I'm riding away...
It seems as if the Indians and Irish have a tendency to mix DNA.
I have a Redskin grandfather and an Irish grandmother.
Probably their love for alcoholic beverage.
Got two Buds cooling for dinnertime right now.
Not just because I'm a bad cook.
But it's Summertime!
C-ya!
Bella, honestly, have you not read me on here before? Catch the facetiousness you did not.
Lets get some things straight first before the real political issue is raised. First off this has to do more with people living in areas they know do or will flood in the foreseable future. Common sense (which is hard to come by these days) should show that if you live on the edge of a lake, river, creek, ect... it will without a doubt flood one day. Yes this dam was built years ago by a few hard workers and engineers that did not have the ability to foresee future flood ravages this dam sustained. A few questions need to be answered about this before we go blaming every Tom, Dick, and Harry for this catastrophe.In the past several years how many waterways were redirected to flow into this lake? And for what reason? Most importantly what brain whiz looked into diverting excessive amounts of water into this lake without ensuring the capability of the lake and dam?
Now if you build your dream house or vacation getaway along waterfornt it is your problem to fix it once it is flooded or destroyed not the governments. At what time did it become everyones problem to rebuild a home or city in a flood prone area?
In the past several years the EPA and government has done some really good things to help prevent these sorts of things. Epa requires detention on developed ares greater than or equal to 1ac development. They require these new projects to reduce the runoff to equall that of what it was before. So the argument of all these developed areas creating more runoff is false. To add to that part of the requirements for those detainages is to filter the water by allowing sediment and chemicals to settle to the bottom prior to leaving the site that is being detained. They do this several ways to complicated to type up, for me to make it make sense, but I would suggest you go to your local EPA website and readup on all the requirements that are in law now to help waterways from pollutants and floods. They also require you to rebuild wetlands if you encroach on them. The place all of this goes wrong is natural storm water drainage as Hal suggests. Municipalities divert natural watersheds for convience purposes rather than leaving them intact. Parking lots and large buildings aren't to blame for this because they by law are not allowed to create more runoff and in fact most of the times decrease the amount of runoff over a 24 hour period on said properties. I deal with these issues on a daily basis in my job with a contractor. As I mentioned above about the pollutants, we are required to detain/retain water in developed ares to reduce pollution of natural watersheds. It lately has been forgotten what these ponds are used for around our towns and cities. There was an article several months back on F&S about a city I believe in MN that has tested several local ponds in housing developments that had high levels of pollutants in the sediment at the bottom of these ponds. Well that is good because that is what these ponds were intended to do, but now we have people not understanding what they are and why they are created, who want us to now do something about it. My point is we can only do so much before we tie our hands behind our backs, and limit what people can and can't do.
As suggested by Bella flood plains should be left for agricultural reasons rather than building on. I must correct her, it doesn't take centuries for farm land to recover once a house or another building is developed on the land. Mother nature is something you must fight everyday to keep her from taking what you have created. Concrete is broke down constantly by Ms. Nature, along with just about every other building material. Some are more easily broke down than others but she will take it from you if you don't fight her, thats how many people make a living in some form of maintainence. Also topsoil is precious but it never goes anywhere it is just moved from here to there, just like water. Their was a show on the Discovery channel that was about armegedon that proved it would only take 25yrs for New York City to be completely covered by vegetation. The buildings had fell within 10yrs and only remains were left. I don't think it was spot on but it is far closer than what anyone can imagine.
what mr. herring talked about is the result of humans having to mess with nature in every way possible and think there won't be repucussions. as long as we feel like we have to develope or build on every piece of land, we will have disasters. common sense.
Blackdawgz, I think your refering to survival of the fittest? And those who populate the areas that provide the easiest way of life are not dumb, ignorant, or wastes, they are smart and no different than any living organism that is on this earth! If I understand what your saying is, is that people are lazy and incompetent if they live close to water and areas that provide means of producing food, than I would have to say your illinformed and maybe dillusional. I believe you mentioned before your of Native American decent? Well where do you think they choose to live? What about the people in the Biblical days? We all if oppurtunity allows live in ares that provide the easiest means necessary to live.
I don't think anyone would disagree that there is over development, I'm just bringing to light some facts that go along with new and old developments, that were in conflict with some statements in the article. We won't make this another pissing match, we just need to present all the facts, not personal opinions, or hear say. I presented facts that can be backed up on any states EPA website under their storm water pollution prevention department. I must admit some states have stricter requirements but most are equal to one another so I can't speak for every state. Also cities have the ability to pass on more stringent requirements than EPA and the majority do. I think we all agree that people who build or live in flood plains or along bodies of water should be responsable for their own property and what happens to it, not the tax payers. We agree we need more conservation land, but we need to watch who has jurisdiction over that land. We need better SWPPP's that will help with flooding and pollutants making it to our water ways, but we need to evaluate what problems may arise from said plans.
I would like for everyone to research Grand Lake St. Mary's in Ohio that has a "No water contact" advisory on the lake,and why/how this lake became so polluted. It isn't because of development of any sort, but has to do with rerouting the natural watersheds off of farm land to directly flow to the lake, not allowing the earth to do the natural filtering it does. My point is this is a bigger problem than development. We try to do good things for the eviroment yet we ruin other parts of it doing so.
Blackdawgz, Sorry I'm not an english major, and that it offends you! Anyways your first post reads differently to me, maybe because I'm an idiot and not an english major! As for your other post I'm not sure where all the useless knowledge come into play? I remember on another topic how you said you were Native American and gave everyone a history lesson on it. I was just explaining to back up the point that people live where living is easy, not one race is inferior to another. I think if you read my other posts you would realize we're not to different in views ourselves.
As for the engineering of this dam, I seriously doubt it was their fault. This dam was constructed in the 20's when engineers didn't have the technology and know how we do today. This dam was probably at the end of its life anyway, and was ready to be replaced. I'm sure the engineers didn't have the foresight to know there was going to be more water dumped into this lake than the dam was designed for along with a massive flood on top of that. Engineering is much like history in the fact that we learn from past mistakes, or I should say we should learn from past mistakes.
The construction industry has more regulations than most other industries, and I doubt it was their fault either. Once again it was built in the 20's. If you don't believe me on the regulations on the construction industry read the IBC, NEC, ADAAG, AISC, ASTM, and the hundreds of other codes and regs. My point is that there was nothing that was going to keep this dam intact as it was designed and built too. Their maybe fault at the local government level for not seeing the future chance of a catastrophic failure, because of age and design. We have no control over Mother Nature and events such as this. We can only try to prevent it from happening. It failed from 10" of rain in 12 hr period which is probably a 500yr flood for that area, you would have to get flood plans from the state to know for sure. In short this was going to happen sooner or later, and it should be rebuilt to todays standards to ensure it may not happen again in the future. I would have to make an educated guess and say most dams built in that period that are still in working condition could not withstand that amount of rain in that short of a period, and if they did another part of the lake would have to give to be able to handle that additional water flow.
blackdawgz
Keep writing, you expressed my very thoughts. You cut thure the BS and told the truth.
And as far as the thousands of acres encased in asphalt, there's another option as well: permeable pavement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permeable_paving --> has some information about it. Basically, it allows water to seep through the pavement, thereby minimizing runoff. Just another tool we can use to limit our impact on our waterways that so far hasn't really caught on...
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