The Big Muddy is Again
The Spray at Gavins Point Dam
The kids of all ages I saw frolicking in the spray rising from the boiling froth in the Gavins Point Dam Sunday were having a ball. I’m sure they had no idea how much trouble those record releases of 160,000 cfs – enough to drain the 492,000 acre foot Lewis and Clark Lake every day-and-a-half – were causing along the Missouri River downstream.
I saw that damage first-hand from the air on Tuesday when I photographed the flooding between Sunshine Bottoms and Peru. I knew things would be a mess at Niobrara and below the Platte River. But I didn’t expect what I saw at Fort Calhoun, where the river stretched from bluff to bluff. I didn’t think I’d ever see that in my lifetime. Neither did 99.99999 percent of the people who live and work along the river.
Nearly all of DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge was underwater. Where I-29 and I-680 meet, only the cloverleaf interchange is visible. There is water miles from the river once flowed, especially in the valley between Hamburg, Iowa, and Nebraska City.
It’s not the Corps of Engineer’s fault. Blame God and the rain he dumped on Montana this spring, and the snow he sent to the mountains in the upper reaches of the Missouri River watershed. Those precipitation levels were of historic proportions, and so is this flood. The Corps didn’t guarantee flooding would end when they built the six big dams on the Missouri, only that it would be reduced. It has been.
But the Missouri was once a wild river that rearranged geography each year. The Big Muddy is again. It’s going to be a long summer. Say a prayer for those who have already lost their homes, farms and businesses, and for the many more that might before the great flood is over.
Looking upriver at Niobrara
DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge
Looking east across Fort Atkinson State Historical Park at Fort Calhoun
Looking upriver across Eppley Air Field with I-29 at right
Looking north between Nebraska City and Hamburg, IA, across miles of water and the tops of houses, center pivots, grain bins and trees.
Please don’t take this as me being unsympathetic to the plight of all the people who are losing their homes, farms, businesses, etc.
But does anyone have a link they can share that has the ORIGINAL path of the mighty MO before it was channelized by the Corps? It would be very interesting to see how it compares to the “flood” of today.
I think people forget that a lot of that land that is now (or at least until recently) farm land and houses, even small towns, was once a riverbed. I have heard people talk of how wide the Missouri River used to be before it was “commercialized.” But I have never seen a map or photo or drawing of it, or even known for sure how wide it stretched. Did it used to go from bluff to bluff in spots? I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it had at places. I have even heard recent rumors that the bridge built to cross from NE to MO at Brownville was built over dry land and then the river was “moved” under it. I feel that might be a stretch of the imagination, but I’m sure it’s path was altered some when the river was “tamed.”
Again, it is not that I don’t feel sorry for these people. I have friends that have lost their homes and farms and have been forced to close down their business because of this historic flood. But I am pretty sure they all knew (or at least their insurance companies knew) that this was always a possibility.
This is most likely a once in a lifetime event for many of us to witness, and when you go out to view it, remember to respect the power that water holds.
[...] The Big Muddy is Again July 1, 2011Afield and Afloat1 Comment The Spray at Gavins Point Dam [...]
Very nice photos. These floods could have been a lot worse, There were two nuclear-power plants in Nebraska that were threatened by the Missouri River flooding and things could have really got out of hand.