Government Policy and Budget Discussion Thread (no politics)

[GopherRock]

And no one has mentioned yet that the main channel of the Mississippi River should probably be in Morgan City right now. 

[Cincydawg]

 Everything was redesigned and rebuilt to withstand a Cat 3 hurricane. Ummm...

Is that the highest category possible?


(JK)

[847badgerfan]

And no one has mentioned yet that the main channel of the Mississippi River should probably be in Morgan City right now.

I've mentioned it many times before. The cost of holding the Mississippi in its current place is roughly $7.5 Billion/year (2016 figure - the last time I researched it).

Read this.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1987/02/23/atchafalaya

I've posted it before, but it's been a while.

[FearlessF]

Maybe the idea of moving, or closing one of the most culturally significant large cities in the United States, one of the urban anchors of the South, with a population of about 1.3 million people is a really hard one to get any traction for.

don't have to move it or close it down
just no more government money goes into it

it will simply work it's self out

[CWSooner]

I read somewhere that NO was above sea level when it was built.  The river would flood the area and deposit silt which offset the normal sinkage that occurs.

They build levees and the flooding stopped, usually, so no more silt.  Subsidence.

Then there's this.  All the dams on rivers that eventually flow into the Mississippi reduce the silt load that the Mississippi carries, so less is deposited at the mouth.
Several tributaries of the Missouri River are dammed, the Missouri River itself has 15 dams on it, the Red River (of the South) is dammed, the Arkansas River is dammed, the Cimmaron (that flows into the Arkansas) is dammed, the Tennessee River is dammed, the Cumberland River is dammed, probably some other tributaries of the Ohio River are dammed.
All of that sand and soil that could be renewing the land around the mouth of the Mississippi is being trapped behind dozens of dams upstream.

[SFBadger96]

Shoot, by that metric (costs the feds more than it provides), we can get rid of well more than half the states in the union. Might be the way for the Confederacy to finally be rid of the U.S.A.!

Or we could just get rid of the states that cost twice as much as they generate in federal revenue. That would only be about ten states, and we would need passports to travel to Hawaii and Florida. The new non-United States would have a pretty balanced college football conference, with Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, as well as Mississippi, Kentucky, West Virginia, and even North Dakota bringing the spoiler from FBS-land. Every conference needs cellar dwellers, and that's where Hawaii and New Mexico come in.

[847badgerfan]

Shoot, by that metric (costs the feds more than it provides), we can get rid of well more than half the states in the union. Might be the way for the Confederacy to finally be rid of the U.S.A.!

Or we could just get rid of the states that cost twice as much as they generate in federal revenue. That would only be about ten states, and we would need passports to travel to Hawaii and Florida. The new non-United States would have a pretty balanced college football conference, with Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, as well as Mississippi, Kentucky, West Virginia, and even North Dakota bringing the spoiler from FBS-land. Every conference needs cellar dwellers, and that's where Hawaii and New Mexico come in.

Please read the article I posted.

We, as in mankind, need to stop believing we can control nature. We cannot, and we never will. It's just not possible.

CW.. there are many more dammed tributaries. The Illinois has a ton. The Wisconsin has a ton. The St. Croix. It goes on and on - there are many many more than just those.

You'd be surprised about how little sedimentation is behind all of those upstream dams too - not nearly as much as one would think. The water flowing in these rivers is very turbid, and the velocities are often so high, there is not enough time for settlement to happen. Combine that with the hydraulic "violence" that occurs when a lock opens and there you have it.

Velocity is what causes the delta to get blown out. If all of the levees were removed, you'd see a lot less velocity and a whole lot more settlement.

[CWSooner]

Long but interesting analysis of what Iran might try to do to us in the near future.

Part 2 of 2 of the above analysis.

[CWSooner]

Please read the article I posted.

We, as in mankind, need to stop believing we can control nature. We cannot, and we never will. It's just not possible.

CW.. there are many more dammed tributaries. The Illinois has a ton. The Wisconsin has a ton. The St. Croix. It goes on and on - there are many many more than just those.

You'd be surprised about how little sedimentation is behind all of those upstream dams too - not nearly as much as one would think. The water flowing in these rivers is very turbid, and the velocities are often so high, there is not enough time for settlement to happen. Combine that with the hydraulic "violence" that occurs when a lock opens and there you have it.

Velocity is what causes the delta to get blown out. If all of the levees were removed, you'd see a lot less velocity and a whole lot more settlement.

Badge:

The engineers who ran the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering were firm on dammed rivers depriving the seacoast of sediments.  I remember watching a documentary movie "River of Sand" on the subject.
And they also said that the destiny of every dam is to be at the foot of a mudflat with a stream meandering through it and going over the dam in a waterfall.

[SFBadger96]

Please read the article I posted.

We, as in mankind, need to stop believing we can control nature. We cannot, and we never will. It's just not possible.

I get your take on New Orleans. You are probably right. Good luck getting traction with the idea (I'm not your audience, I like it out here near the fault lines, not in there near the big river).

But to your second point, there is little doubt that we can control nature, but we can't conquer it. We control nature all the time in so many different ways, but we can't overcome it. The universe will be here long after our species is gone.

[OrangeAfroMan]

We control day-to-day nature.  We have nothing when it comes to once-in-awhile nature, where it decimates our cute tinker-toy erector-set societies.  What bothers me is that these are called acts-of-god.....no, they're pissant humans being inadequate/stupid/stubborn.

[Cincydawg]

I looked at google maps in LA of that H-shaped area of the Mississippi and read a shorter version on Wiki along with the Atlantic article.  It's fascinating, to me.

Nature is deceptive in allowing us to THINK we can control Her for a while and then whoosh.

What happens if a large water rich hurricane sits down just north of that mess and rains for a while?

[Cincydawg]

I also have the opinion that "we" are quite arrogant to believe we can model with much accuracy climate because of its complexity.  The possibility of a run away "climate change" exists that could be much worse than the models.

[847badgerfan]

Badge:

The engineers who ran the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering were firm on dammed rivers depriving the seacoast of sediments.  I remember watching a documentary movie "River of Sand" on the subject.
And they also said that the destiny of every dam is to be at the foot of a mudflat with a stream meandering through it and going over the dam in a waterfall.

Where?

I'm all for taking out every damn dam and every damn levee too, but it wouldn't do a damn thing for the delta. I understand the shipping industry would suffer. Transition those workers to rail and trucking. Let the rivers have their floodplains and floodways back. The below was a bad plan, and still is.