The deal was set up in the late 1920's, an extra channel parallels the river for 35 miles to take excess flood water and save the one town in the unlikely event both the Mississippi and the Ohio river reach high crests at the same place and same time. That's happening now. The levee around the town isn't high enough....
Back then the channel area was basically swampland of no account, and the town of Cairo was an up and coming big town. The plan made some sense back then, protect the valuable and let the worthless swamp take the water flow.
Now 80 years later, the floodway has been turned into some of the more valuable land in the country, with 100 - 200 homes in it aside from the 133,000 acres of good farm land, while the town of Cairo has fallen on hard times and is in decay and has barely 4 times more people in it than are living in the floodway.
Strictly speaking the deal is the deal and the floodway should be blown and everyone shoulda known this day would come.
But - 80 years changes a lot, and the deal probably shoulda been reviewed along the way? I'm not from there so I don't know but it seems a lot of damage will be done to _possibly_ save something of lessor value in today's world.
There are many possibilities of what happens to the spillway after the sacrifical levees are blown. At the least the fertile topsoil will be scored and washed and covered with sand deposits and debris, making the 133,000 acres unproductive for several years to forever.... When, if ever, will the blown levee's be rebuilt to start with?
Certainly a difficult choice, with the deals and time and all. Again, I'm not from there so I could be all wrong on the politics of the situation. Seems race comes into play too, depending on which side you want to be.....
At this point,t hey seem to be playing it both ways, evacuating both the spillway and the town; adding the explosives to the levee pipes (how would you remove that to safety standards without actually blowing them????) and then will it do any good, or will the town be swamped by what is coming out of the Ohio anyhow as they are getting more rain over there. It's an ugly situation all around.
Takes 20 hours to pump the explosives into the levee pipes; I can't see any other outcome but to let it blow after that?
Then they float another barge down the spillway & blow out the bottom levee in the same way 2 days later so the water can drain.
Then we lose 20 million bu of corn (prob 10 corn, and equivelent of soybeans...) in a year when we are short on corn. ;)
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Today's Featured Article - A Cautionary Tale - by Ian Minshull. In the early 1950s my father bought an Allis Chalmers B and I used it for all the row crop work with the mangolds and potatoes, rolling and the haymaking on our farm. The farm and the Allis were sold and I have spent a lifetime working on farms throughout the country. I promised myself that one day I would own an Allis. That time event
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