DAMS MAKE MAJOR FLOODS WORSE? (Short)

  • The Army Corps of Engineers installed these wing dams to force the current to the middle. The rushing water scours the bottom of the channel to keep navigation open. A new study alleges the wing dams slow the current during major floods and cause flood waters to be higher. Photo by Lester Graham.

A recent study concludes that some of the flood control projects along the Midwest’s largest rivers might be making the severity of some floods worse. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A recent study concludes that some of the flood control projects along the Midwest’s largest rivers might be making the severity of some floods worse. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

The study, published in the journal Geology, looked at the history of flood stages and river flows along portions of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. It concludes that the dams, dikes, and levees constrict rivers so that when there are massive floods, such as on the Mississippi in 1993, they make the situation worse. Everett Shock is a professor at Washington University and one of the authors of the study.

“There needs to be some very clever thought on how to go about some differences in management practices so that we aren’t making large floods worse.”

The Army Corps of Engineers, which built and maintains the flood control projects along rivers, says the study is flawed because it doesn’t use updated data and it doesn’t consider the role that man-made reservoirs play in holding backwater during floods. The Corps also notes that before the flood projects, the rivers often damaged homes, businesses and property on a large scale, something that the Corps says rarely happens now.