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Home » Floods in the Midwest - More Failing Infrastructure!
For weeks now news reports have been showing the Mississippi flooded, dams intentionally breached by the USACE, and farms and towns completely flooded out. OK, so it rained. A lot. But do our news networks not understand that that it is our failed infrastructure that cannot convey and manage the cresting water levels? Why are our civil engineers and other industry colleagues not screaming about this at the top of their lungs? I don't get it. Yes I understand that the rain was an act of God, so they say, but that is why we have dikes, levees, dams, spillways and such all monitored by the USACE. Holland has kept the entire Atlantic Ocean at bay for hundreds of years and we can't manage a river.
Every part of America's infrastructure is failing, and the ASCE is nowhere to be found in the news reports. Neither are the civil engineering firm owners, who one would think would have a high level of credibility in news reports and stand to benefit from action. They should be interviewed for the facts and alternatives! Yes, I know we study 100 year flood plains; I have performed many. However, the standing joke in hydrology is that a 100-year flood comes every 10 years.