Attention ALL Delta hunters...

[Lacuna]

You see there it is.

It needs to be cleaned in a couple spots but not dredged to drain wetlands.

I dont want them to dredge but I do want them to clean it and I do want them to construct control devices along it's confluences and put some control in the water BEFORE it hits the river.

This is kind of thing that our WRP money is supposed to be going to instead of whereever the heck it is going.

Marginal wetlands is what WRP is supposed to be saving. The money is there to contruct devices like this and they are using it for something else.

The money is there to do this right, but it's being diverted in all directions except at what they need to be using it for.

Dredge the Sunflower to stop it from flooding? How deep you going to dredge it?
67 feet?

Gimmie a break

[img]images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img]

[tupe]

Dang I would hate to see Deer Creek Cleared out. I had one of the best Gadwall shoots of my life o that little slip of water.

I am glad to see the debate going on here over this issue, just make sure that whatever side you are on that your voice is heard elsewere as well.

M.B.

[Delta Duck]

I'm all for the buffer strips. All it has to be is about 40' strip. That would do wonders for silting and clean the run off water and the habitat, very much so for the Quail. We do alot of no-till. Over the past 6 years our quail population has jumped to almost huntable numbers.

[Wingman]

Dredging in Tunica county of all the drainages? They do that non-stop in Humphreys. The guy that runs the dragline is about 75 years old....just came by my house last year. It's a non-stop deal for him...they start on the south end of the county, work every ditch, east to west then back again, until they get up on the north end. Each ditch gets cleaned out about every 15 years. That's how this place got drained in the first place. Draglines on barges..floated their way as they dug. At least that's what they tell me. Y'all are on the top of the hill, I'm in the middle, South Delta boys are in the gutter....it's a fact of life that you have to live with if you live in the Delta.

Wingman
ISAIAH 40:31

[Meeka]

Crow, excellent point. You are exactly right about the drainage idea not working when ole man river is up. Where is the water going to go?

They got an answer for that as well, though. They will then have a better excuse for the big billions of dollars sump pump to pump all that drainage over a levee or dike and into the Miss. River. Go back in the archives and look at the few strings on that issue.

Damn this is good. There seems to be much more concern about these issues now. And the concern is on both sides of the issues.

To make the ENTIRE delta floodproof costs way too much money. It would help some farmers though. Do they need that help? I am all for them having it better . . . but that marginal land costs less to buy to begin with. If it no longer floods, does its value increase? That is where the politics of it all comes in.

Now, they wait untill after the spring floods to put the bean crop in. If they can't get it in, or get it out cause it is too wet, or if the prices go down for whatever reason, or if it is too hot and dry, the taxpayers step in with federal funds for crop insurance.

This is just the way I see it. As you can tell, I am not a farmer. I would love to help them though. But is this the way? Is it cost effective? Seems not to me. Not even close. The better way is to compensate the farmers by buying the land or continuing to subsidize when necessary while working on problems like sediment loss. If the water drains quicker and faster, it takes more sediment with it. The farmers need to keep more of the land from washing away down the river.

If you can't imagine how much land goes down the Miss. river, get a good map and look below New Orleans and figure out where all the dry ground next to the river all the way to South Pass came from. Heck, they can divert a little water for a little while each spring from the river and over the levee and into the marsh and thereby replace hundreds of thousands of marsh lost to erosion. If you don't think that is a lot of sediment . . .

IMHO

[Crowell]

If you want to read about the disaster of the Corp of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamations, read Cadillac Desert. Little wonder why this country is broke after reading this analysis.

[Po Monkey Lounger]

I haven't even seen the figures for this proposed boondoggle yet, but I would be willing to bet it would be cheaper for the government to buy the flood prone land from the farmers/landowners at 150% of appraised value, and pay to relocate and build homes for those displaced from their homes. The money they spend on these projects is probably greater than the GNP of most small countries.

[Photoman]

I'm not going to voice my opinion on this issue as to whether or not they should or shouldn't dredge the Sunflower.
BUT I will say that I think these projects like this are just an ego booster or publicity mark for one or several of the bureaucrats in the system.....a bragging peice so to speak, if ya know what I mean.

I'm telling yall the South should'a won...
[img]images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img]

[Wingman]

Why do you people expect anybody to buy anything? The government shouldn't buy the land from these poor people...nor should anybody get any subsidies or welfare checks for their land getting flooded out. IT'S THE FACTS. Build a house in a swamp and sooner or later you're gonna get wet. Plant a field in what used to be a slough, and sooner or later...it's gonna flood. Farmers get too many welfare checks as it is. DISASTER...nobody pays me for not getting to spray enough acres to pay the bills. Nobody pays the merchants in town because people aren't buying the goods. Why do farmers get paid because their beans got drowned out? This insurance crap is a joke. I say, if you built your house in the delta, you shoulda looked for a place on a very big ridge or a trash mound. Mound builders...what a concept..the Indians did it..ants do it. Shouldn't that tell us something? This place gets wet ALOT. If you want your socks to stay dry, you'd better camp on a hill.

Wingman
ISAIAH 40:31

[Po Monkey Lounger]

Thats the fact, Jack.

[Lacuna]

Wouldnt it have to be done again? Destroying the habitats within the river itself?

If there is a silt problem, then dont you fix that BEFORE it ends up in the river?

Did you know that you can stop run off almost entirely if you dike and pipe it?
(which is also good for ducks)

Dikes and Pipes, all the ways down the river. If the COE wants to spend some of our money then thats where they need to spend it.

Then once that is done dredge it A LITTLE.

You cant stop the flooding when the big river is up. If you had dikes and pipes you could hold it off to a large degree.

I deal with water and these problems all the time. It works like this. Stop the silt and the river will clean itself.

The COE are not my favorite people.

They dont do things with wildlife in mind when it comes to standing water, period.

They absolutely ruined the atchafalia basin and have caused the destruction of louisianas coastal marahes in the process, one of the worlds largest salt water estuaries.

If you think the sunflower is bad you should see what they did to south la.

[tupe]

There is my point. With a track record like that why should we trust them NOT to ruin the Sunflower.
Just so you folks know, I have had family and still have friends who work for the Corp.
The EPA report on this project is scathing. I know that the north Delta thinks they need this but it is the same "well we will just send it down stream" that the northern states use on the big river, and look what has happened to the MS river delta in the gulf.
We can not just push this problem down stream. The best way to reduce flood damage is to get US out of the path of the water. It would be MUCh cheaper in teh long run to just buy the land and replant it with trees.

Again, I am glad to see everyone talking about this.

M.B.

[Lacuna]

Once major mistakes are made, things change behind them that make the problem difficult to fix. The Atchafalia is FULL of PEOPLE now.

The only way to fix the Atchaflia is to let the Miss River flood waters spill into it like its supposed to do and flush the system.

You cant do that without a hell of a lot of people saying they dont live in the flood pan but their house floods.

I dont care WHAT you think about where youlive, if a river backs into your house, then you live in the flood pan. Not supposed to? Says WHO?

If you let people have their way about this, the river will be ruined.

I dont want them buying one damn thing from us. You give us the money to fix it. I dont want the federal govt owning all the land adjacent to the damn river. NO WAY

[Lacuna]

People should also realize that the ENTIRE Miss Delta, with the exception of several thousand "high spots" in the river banks, is nothing BUT a flood pan.

This place and all this great soil that is as flat as a board GOT here from flood water.

Of course the Ice Age was ending and there was a rather large amount of water coming down the crack from the giant Ice Sheet melting away hehehehe.

And you think we got problem now....

You know, most of the ancient settlements in this area which number in the thousands, 22,000 sites documented on the delta alone.

Most of them are on high ridges, because this entire place turned into one big swamp for several months of the year.

What that all means is that it is EXTREMELY
marginal in it's WHOLE.

Tunica pushes its water fast enough to appease them, Rolling Fork goes underwater.

It the same from one end to the other.

If you "tilt the angle up" on the sunflower, (which is all dredging does) it will just make the southern delta flood into one giant lake, so that Tunica can build houses in the bottom of the flood pan.

That aint gonna work. Neither is dredging the sunflower. People are just going to have to learn that we ALL live on EXTEREMELY marginal land to START with, and when it rains heavy, it IS going to flood, PERIOD, no matter WHAT you do.

[peewee]

Good points Lacuna.

Hey wingman I always knew them dang ants were smart but think about it, they smarter than most of the environmental engineers out there. Wow!