Conflicting Demands: Levees and Wetlands

 
The Flood of 2008  breached several agricultural levees along the Upper Mississippi in Henderson, Hancock, and Adams Counties in Illinois. 
The farmers who till the 4-mile-wide floodplain here were wiped out for the summer. The village of Meyer, right on the Mississippi, saw its population reduced from 40 people to 10. The flood caused $80 million [...]

Illinois Wetlands Short on Ducks in Fall 2008

 
Four million ducks fly over the Confluence of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, and the Confluence of the  Mississippi and Missouri Rivers a few miles downstream.
There are plenty of geese in Illinois this fall and winter, but the geese will make do with a golf course. Ducks need wetlands and Illinois wetlands were short on [...]

Infrastructure: Morganza-to-the-Gulf Hurricane Protection

 
 
 

 
 
During the Fall of 2006 it was apparent at Dulac, Lower Dulac, and on Bayou du Large that the activities the marshes generate–the shrimping, the crabbing, the fishing, and the new fishing camps raised on stilts–disguised the disaster than had happened the year before and the disaster happening underfoot. The land is sinking at the [...]

The Flood of 2008

There were several floods along the Mississippi and the Louisiana coast during the Summer of 2008.
First, the Flood of 2008 along the Upper Mississippi destroyed many levees that collapsed in 1993, and many that didn’t. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers described the flood as shorted in duration as the 1993 flood, which soaked the Upper [...]