Thank you for posting that very interesting article!
WA news doesn't recognize that anything exists east of Spokane or south of Portland, so we don't get much info on down there.
"...the decision of the Army Corps of Engineers to tame the Mississippi River once and for all."
*snort!* Yeah, sure.
All they seem to need in that area now is a major shake of the New Madrid fault. Maybe a huge crevice could open a take some of that water...
Sue
In some ways I see humankind as being like a kid playing on the seashore. We find out we can direct a bit of the water by piling up sand and digging little ditches with our hands. We are immensely happy and confident and imagine ourselves the master of all the waters of the earth. We overlook the waves that are inevitably going to wash aside our sand castles.
We keep learning more and have recently, in the last fifty years, finally sussed out that just perhaps the Mississippi river watershed is slightly more powerful and complicated than what can be controlled for long with sandcastles built with plastic pails and toy shovels. Even giant hydraulic ones.
I suspect that increasingly we are going to figure out that the best way to deal with a wandering and rampant river is to simply stay out of its way. Farm all you want on the flood plain but limit construction to buildings on barges, tall piles, and structures we can afford to lose.