Two weeks ago, we dove a bit deeper into one of the reasons why the Upper Mississippi River is American Rivers’ Most Endangered River for 2020. Climate change is driving more intense precipitation events and pushing more water into an overwhelmed system. But no issue in a river system is completely separate from another.
Reason #2: Poor floodplain and watershed management
The Upper Mississippi River has been severed from its floodplain due to years of development and the proliferation of flooding structures like levees. This has been a pattern since the 19th century.
More recently, several levee drainage districts have built their levees to unauthorized heights, lacking the proper permits from state and federal agencies. The districts raise them with material during a flood but refuse to remove the material after the event. This map and the orange shapes within it represent where some of these districts are.
In the event of a severe flood, the levee systems in question could push a significant amount of water onto vulnerable communities and farmers. We’ve addressed this issue more extensively in our podcast Stories from the Floodplain.
The behavior of levee districts like the Sny is representative of a more systemic problem along the river: flood management decisions are made in a silo. Farmers, cities, counties, drainage districts, and states make separate decisions when preparing for a flood. This adds unnecessary chaos to a natural disaster.
Due to years of discriminatory policies, communities of color and/or low-income in urban areas are especially vulnerable to failed flood infrastructure.
Development has also damaged the hydrology of the Upper Mississippi and its surrounding habitat. Despite efforts to restore parts of the river, habitat continues to degrade one to four times faster than it can be rehabilitated.
Take Action
Prairie Rivers Network and several organizations are calling on state and federal leaders to bring an end to this antiquated way of protecting people from flooding. There’s an opportunity here to create a “master plan” for the Upper Mississippi basin, a plan that would work towards a more cohesive effort when considering flood risk management decisions.
However, it must also drastically change the status quo of building and maintaining higher levees. It is more important than ever to shift our priority to nature-based solutions that can simultaneously protect vulnerable communities and restore vital habitat in the watershed.
Use our Action Alert here to contact your members of Congress and officials in states throughout the Upper Mississippi River. Voice your support for a plan to change our current system of reckless floodplain management!
