Mighty river, leashed, ‘will fight back,’ flood
ST. LOUIS — For many in the flood-weary Midwest, fighting the Mississippi River has become an almost annual event.
In Missouri’s Cape Girardeau County, all but five of the 32 highest crests on record have occurred since the record-setting 1993 flood, and four of the top 10 have happened since 2011.
Unusual weather patterns are a symptom of global warming, but Bob Criss, an earth and planetary science professor at Washington University in St. Louis, blames current flooding on urbanization. Criss says the latest spike of rain wouldn’t have caused major flooding — blamed for 25 deaths in Missouri and Illinois — if the river wasn’t constricted by levees and floodwalls.
“The Mississippi River behaved during this event like a small river, and it’s acting like a small river because the water has no place to go,” he said. The Illinois River was expected to reach near-record crests this week between Havana and Valley City in Illinois.
Earthen mounds have held back the Mississippi since French settlers installed the river’s first levees in Louisiana in 1717. By 1926, the Mississippi River Commission declared its levee system would “prevent the destructive effects of floods.” Less than a year later, the “Great Mississippi Flood of 1927” devastated much of the Midwest.
The Mississippi now has an estimated 3,500 miles of levees, including small barriers around farmland and structures protecting cities.
“Prior to levee building, the river was a wild thing and it spread out between the river bluffs,” said Richard Knaup, Cape Girardeau County’s emergency management director. “Now we’ve tried to tame it. Mother Nature and Old Man River will fight back.”