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U.S. government caused the flooding

When government agencies make policy decisions that result in disasters that cause millions of dollars in property damage and even loss of life, who is held responsible? Who should be held responsible and in what way?

When government agencies make policy decisions that result in disasters that cause millions of dollars in property damage and even loss of life, who is held responsible? Who should be held responsible and in what way?

For example, if an engineering firm designed a faulty bridge, and that bridge collapsed, the company and even some of its employees can face both civil and criminal prosecution.

Given that, should victims of government malfeasance, recklessness, and irresponsibility be able to sue individual government employees when their actions and policies result in property damage and loss of life?

Starting in the mid-20th century, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers designed and built a series of hydro-electric and flood control dams on the lower Missouri River. Starting with the Fort Peck Dam southeast of Medicine Hat, inside the Montana border, the meandering Missouri is controlled at six points before it joins the Mississippi at St. Louis.

Prior to these dams being built, heavy winter snows and spring rains often conspired to create catastrophic floods from the Dakotas to Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri. In spite of the Missouri’s size as a river, it only drops just over one foot per mile from Montana to the Mississippi. As a result, when the water rises even modestly, it can inundate fairly broad flood plains.

With the advent of the dams, and the big reservoirs behind them, the Corps of Engineers was able to monitor snow levels in the Rockies, and plan accordingly. From the 1950s until 1993, flooding on the Missouri was eradicated.

The economic spin-offs from this were enormous. Hundreds of thousands of acres of old floodplain became available as farmland. The river’s role as a transportation venue was multiplied, and billions of dollars of freight are transported by barge from the upper plains down to New Orleans every year.

At the encouragement of the U.S. federal government, cities expanded within the river valleys, and hundreds of miles of new lake shore and tamed river run was turned into recreational property. Resort communities, golf courses and campgrounds now line the Missouri.

So well-planned and designed was the river management plan, that the spillways on the six major dams have only ever been opened a handful of times before this June. The spillways at Fort Peck — completed in 1943 — were opened for the first time ever this year.

In the late 1980s, the federal agencies responsible for managing the Missouri River enacted a policy of attempting to recreate some of the river’s pre-dam characteristics.

By creating an artificial spring run-off surge, they hoped to help replenish some of the river bottom wetlands that the spring floods would leave behind.

This was accomplished by holding back some of the winter flow so that the reservoirs were closer to capacity at the onset of spring.

One of the first downsides to this is that the massive hydro-generating stations within the dams were not producing as much clean electricity in the winter months, forcing customers from Montana to Missouri to rely on much dirtier coal-fired electricity.

Give that some thought.

The second downside was that the river levels began to be far more unstable, which was mostly problematic to the river transport industry.

Because the 1980s and 1990s were relatively dry decades, the looming problem with this new river management policy was largely hidden.

The disastrous Missouri floods of 1993 were a harbinger of this year’s disaster. Even though they weren’t caused by the current policy, the 1993 floods were exacerbated by the fact that two of the lower reservoirs were already unnecessarily full when torrential spring rains struck the Midwest in June.

This winter, river managers knew in January that the snow pack in the Upper Missouri watershed was at a 50-year record.

In spite of that, the bulk of the mountain runoff began to hit the Fort Peck reservoir when it was already plumb full.

In spite of near-record snow packs on the Plains, the five lower reservoirs were also not drawn down during the winter, even with near-record high electrical demands across the Midwest.

Thus, as a direct result of a federal government policy that put wetland rehabilitation ahead of billions of dollars of private and commercial property, millions of lives, and millions of livelihoods, six giant spillways on the Missouri are dumping a record Rocky Mountain snowmelt at the same time that record spring rains are filling every Missouri tributary to levels not seen since the 1920s.

The result is a natural disaster that was wholly preventable, yet it’s doubtful that any of the federal policy makers responsible will ever stand trial in a civil or criminal court.

Think about that next time you put your faith in government.

Bill Greenwood is a freelance columnist living in Red Deer.