playing with nature, nature bites back

from Time to Move the Mississippi, Experts Say:

Like many major rivers, the Mississippi has tributaries, which feed water into it, and distributaries, which carry water away from it as it nears its mouth. Its tributaries include the Missouri and Ohio Rivers; one way or another, every stream, storm drain and parking lot from the Rockies to the Appalachians drains into the Mississippi.
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Until people interfered with its flow, the Mississippi’s path to the gulf silted up naturally over time; water flow slowed and the river bed lost its capacity to carry a big flood. When next the big flood came, the river would suddenly turn one of its distributaries into its new main stem.

This kind of switching has occurred roughly every 1,500 years, geologists say, and since about 1950 the river has been ready for a change — to the Atchafalaya. The Corps of Engineers prevents that from happening with an enormous installation of locks, dams and power stations near Lettsworth, north of Baton Rouge and about 100 miles northwest of New Orleans.
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People involved in the proposal recognize that the lower Mississippi is “a working landscape” that must continue to function, said James T. B. Tripp, a lawyer for Environmental Defense and a member of the Louisiana Governor’s Commission for Coastal Restoration.

“One of the major obstacles to doing any of this pre-Katrina was the navigation industry,” he said. “As a result of Katrina, everyone’s thinking has become more flexible. Katrina brought all that home: how vulnerable this economic infrastructure has become. So there is a greater readiness today to think more boldly about how we can manage the river in a way that will help restore and build wetlands.”
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“Is it practical? Yes,” he said. “Will it be expensive? Yes. But when you look at the alternatives it’s very cost effective,” particularly in an era of rising sea levels.
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But there is a growing recognition that the cost of not acting will be high as well.

Along the Louisiana coast, in the delta plain along the river and the oaky woods along Chenier Plain to the west, much of the land is only a few feet above sea level. If seas rise as expected by two or three feet, or more, in the next century, and if the muddy sediments that form this landscape continue to compact and subside, land loss will only accelerate.

Coastal erosion is not just a matter of concern for the communities that are being, bit by bit, washed out to sea. Coastal erosion is a major issue: it affects the power of storms and their ability to reach further inland; it affects entire ecosystems as salt water filters into bodies of fresh water; it affects major industries such as shrimping and the movement of oil & natural gas. The article mentions rising sea levels on several occassions as a cause for lost coast land. The fact is, thanks to the permanent diverting of the Mississippi in the first place, land is being lost at a dramatic pace simply due to coastal erosion. Rediverting the mighty Mississippi again seems like another dangerous move (as in 'two wrongs don't make a right'), but perhaps it would be enough.