Democracy for Vancouver

Barging shut down on the Mississippi, grain prices shooting even higher, and rail traffic embargoed through the Midwest throughout the peak summer grain season:

The worst flooding in the Midwest in 15 years has closed 300 miles of the Mississippi River to commercial traffic. Several bridges and unknown miles of railroad track have been damaged or washed away.
…
Barge traffic is expected to resume in two to three weeks as water levels drop and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reinstalls electrical equipment that had been moved.

The Mississippi River is the main channel for grain flowing from Midwest farms to the export terminals at the Gulf of Mexico. The river transported 68 million tonnes of farm goods in 2006, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The Mississippi also moved 48 million tonnes of petroleum products and 5 million tonnes of coal.
…
The railroad’s east-west line across southern Iowa and north-south through St. Louis are out of service. About 50 to 60 trains a day are affected.
…
“Their equipment is completely under water,” said a grain trader at an elevator that ships corn and soybeans by rail. “They have no idea if it will work — or even if it’s still there. Some of these bridges may not be structurally sound anymore. It’s going to be a mess for months.”

Thank heavens for the Army Corps of Engineers, or where would we be? [/snark]

According to the book River Basins and Coastal Systems Planning Within the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Congress put significant funding into the Corps’ hands after the 1993 floods on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers (the last “500 year flood event” that was somehow only 15 years ago):

In March of 2002, Brigadier General E.J. Arnold reported that the MR&T project was 87 percent complete physically. He also estimated that the nation had invested about $10.8 billion for planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of the project and that the accumulated savings in flood damages totaled more than $258 billion.

Of course, this was just after Katrina, and the Corps was at pains to show that it hadn’t just had its thumb up its ass for the last decade.

To cut the Corps a little slack, $10.8 billion is a pittance when you consider the size of the Mississippi River Drainage Basin and what’s at stake in terms of lives, property, homes and commerce:

And when you consider that we spend that much money in Iraq every 3 weeks.

But perhaps if the Corps wasn’t so focused on maintaining its fiefdoms, and keeping the Mississippi so channelized - and cut off from its natural course - that flooding is an absolute certainty, perhaps it could focus on the solutions that would protect both the rivers and the people whose lives and livelihoods depend on them.