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How much water does the Mississippi carry past St. Louis each day? I'm sure someone has calculated this but I couldn't even guess. Of course, it varies with the stage of the river and now, near flood level, the amount must be very great. That's the Martin Luther King Bridge on the left and the Eads Bridge on the right. And that is a buoy on the lower left, not some kind of fish jumping up.
One of the environmental controversies in this area is about the channelization of the great rivers. The Missouri and Mississippi are lined by high levees along much of their routes. These are meant to protect the towns and farms flanking them but, by holding the rivers back from their natural flood plains, make the inundation much worse when a levee ruptures or in places without this system. One of my occasional readers, river.relief, is an expert in this stuff. Maybe he can tell us more.
TOMORROW: a very tenuous connection to St. Patrick's Day.
How much water does the Mississippi carry past St. Louis each day? I'm sure someone has calculated this but I couldn't even guess. Of course, it varies with the stage of the river and now, near flood level, the amount must be very great. That's the Martin Luther King Bridge on the left and the Eads Bridge on the right. And that is a buoy on the lower left, not some kind of fish jumping up.One of the environmental controversies in this area is about the channelization of the great rivers. The Missouri and Mississippi are lined by high levees along much of their routes. These are meant to protect the towns and farms flanking them but, by holding the rivers back from their natural flood plains, make the inundation much worse when a levee ruptures or in places without this system. One of my occasional readers, river.relief, is an expert in this stuff. Maybe he can tell us more.
TOMORROW: a very tenuous connection to St. Patrick's Day.
