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Excerpt:
Chapter 1: Flood
In July and August of 1993 the Great Flood of the Midwest destroyed
more than 10,000 homes, killed fifty people, inundated 15 million
acres of farmland, halted barges for two months, suspended the
region’s rail traffic and wreaked $15 billion worth of damage. This
most significant flood ever to hit the United States was also one of
the country’s greatest ever natural disasters.
This flood that twitched through the Midwest that summer came from the
two largest river systems in the United States: the Missouri and
Mississippi. From June through August precipitation on the northern
plains and throughout the central U.S. leaped to three times its
normal volume. Regions used to nine days of rain each July felt the
sudden hammer of 20 wet afternoons. By mid summer soils were
saturated, leaving rainwater with no other avenue than to shoot over
land.
The Missouri and Mississippi river confluence sits 15 miles upstream
of St. Louis. When floodwaters crashed past this point, sandbags
failed, residents fled, and levees burst like buttons popping off a
snug shirt. Passengers evacuated the Spirit of St. Louis airport;
jailers unlocked cells to whisk inmates to safety. The deluge closed
down a water treatment plant and swamped a sewage facility serving
75,000 homes. The surge blocked four major bridges spanning into the
metro area. Rising waters swept 50 propane tanks from their moorings
and police, fearing an explosion, evacuated hundreds of nearby
residents. Engineers drilled holes in the Gravois Bridge to prevent
its uprooting by the River Des Peres.
Every second more than a million cubic feet of water roared past the
Gateway Arch of St. Louis, flooding over 500 businesses and swamping
Highway 40 under six feet of water. A concert to raise funds for
victims from an earlier flood had to be cancelled. Meanwhile, con
artists swooped in to reap a profit from calamity. When the waters
subsided in St. Louis, police spotted an industrious pair pacing near
Jefferson and Gravois avenues. They toted cans and collected cash from
drivers. Their cans read: Flood Releif 93 / Salvation Army. Recalling
that ‘i’ comes before ‘e,’ officers arrested the sloppy imposters.
Panicked residents outside St. Louis bought water bottles by the
dozen, homeowners prayed, and farmers cursed busted levees when river
water dumped sand on their crops. As though to emphasize catastrophe,
three tornados twirled above St. Charles during an afternoon of the
deluge. In Hardin, Missouri, floodwaters plucked coffins and burial
vaults from a cemetery, shoving hundreds like hockey pucks across corn
and bean fields.
“They’d take off in all different directions,” one resident recalled.
“Then you’d just watch them glide off into the sunset.”
At its peak, the ‘93 floodwaters covered 16,000 square miles, more
than the surface areas of lakes Ontario and Erie combined. Throughout
the state of Missouri the disaster obliterated all previous flood
records for stage, volume, peak discharge, duration and frequency. In
Kansas City in July, the Missouri River rose more than two feet higher
than its unprecedented crest of 1951.
In the flood’s aftermath the Salvation Army raised $6.5 million in
aid, billionaire Ross Perot flew out to the Midwest to pledge another
million dollars and the Anheuser – Busch brewery shut down its St.
Louis beer taps to fill six packs with fresh water for the city of St.
Joseph. Already that year in the state of Missouri wet weather halted
crop planting on three-quarters of a million acres. The floodwaters
confiscated two million acres more. Astonished farmers sighed when
they saw hundreds of their acres coated with sediment. By piling sand
from inches to feet thick on sixty percent of its lower floodplain,
the Missouri River ruined dozens of farms. For many, the cost to
remove this petrified pollution was more than the value of land it
covered, creating so significant an impact that the Soil Conservation
Service labeled the flood a “geologic event.”
Close to a decade later I drove across the state of Missouri, hunting
for anecdotes about how this flood stirred havoc along its sinuous
trail. Rumors told how the event delivered not only devastation but
elicited creative resilience from those affected. Surprisingly, I
found a vast difference between expectations and reality.
Reviews:
"Mullen’s travelogue
is an eloquent testimonial to the need for common sense and logic
regarding "river management" and the importance of recognizing rivers
as living and ever-moving sources of life. Mullen’s Rivers of Change
documents the history of the assumption that man can force rivers to
serve him. As he shows us through interviews with barge pilots,
wildlife biologists, federal authorities and tribal historians, that
assumption is risky business.
"We learn that there are many contributing factors to the health of a
river eco-system and many reasonable goals with a wide variety of ways
of affecting a positive outcome for the birds, fish and people who
depend on rivers for life. Rivers of Change is easy to follow as it
weaves together the meandering currents of knowledge gleaned from the
locals into a crystal clear basis for making policy. While none of us
can predict what lies around the next bend, Mullen shows that unless
river managers listen to the river and learn from past mistakes there
will be no happy ending.
"Recommended to anyone with a love for history and a passion for
rivers."
- Stephenie Ambrose Tubbs, Co-author of The Lewis and Clark
Companion
"Tom Mullen's painstakingly researched and eminently readable account
of life and change along America's great arteries is much like a river
journey -- educational, unpredictable and inspiring."
- Brad Herzog, author of States of Mind
and Small World
"In the wake of Lewis and Clark, Tom Mullen followed their trail along
the Missouri, Yellowstone and Columbia Rivers to see what two
centuries has done to those once wild and unpredictable streams.
Enlivened by an insatiable curiosity and tempered by a wealth of
experience managing water resource projects around the globe, Mullen
takes us along on his own journey of discovery."
- Dayton Duncan,
Author of Out West: A Journey Through Lewis & Clark's America
“Tom Mullen has made an amazing journey here – along the rivers of
Lewis and Clark – asking the land and its people for stories about the
streams he travels. Whether he’s canoeing, scuba diving, bicycling, or
sitting in a café with a local expert, Tom’s search for the heart of a
river and its country is made with care, passion and precision. With
loving detail, he chronicles the path of his expedition through both
history and change, ultimately seeking that most elusive of places –
home.”
- Rebecca Lawton
Author of Reading Water: Lessons from the River
“Rivers of Change provides nuance and context to debates over the
future of our great western rivers. This briskly moving travelogue
uses Mullen’s encounters with tribal elders, Army Corps engineers,
environmental activists, and power plant managers to explain the
conflicting demands for water, whether to generate hydropower,
transport barge traffic, or protect endangered species. Along the way,
a little history helps the reader appreciate that rivers change, just
as life itself does. How we choose to react to change says as much
about us as a species as it does about the great Missouri River.”
- Robert Glennon
Author of Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s
Freshwaters
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