Ethanol the cause of the severity of Iowa flooding??

farmerbrent · 06-20-2008, 07:55 AM

What is sad is there are people so arrogant that they think man has control over everything. We do what we can, but we are not in control. This world is much more in control than man. The reason it flooded was because of 25 inches of rain in six weeks. Not sure if anyone knows, but that is a lot. Too much. Wetlands or not, there would be flooding.

Cyclonesrule91 · 06-20-2008, 08:18 AM

I like this idiot conspiracy that farmers are nothing more then abusers of the soil and throw conservation out the window so they can plant every available square centimeter of ground. They did that in the 70's and 80's and then CRP entered the picture. I work with and around a lot of farmers and none of them are abusers of the soil because the land is their life.

Some people need to look a little bit more objectively at things and put their little personal grudges aside for once.

CyForPresident · 06-20-2008, 08:32 AM

Crap, crap, crap.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the 3 inches of rain a day for 2 weeks straight. Give me a break.

Wetland soil is not exactly the greatest either. And I don't buy that Iowa was once a swamp, because it wasn't. It was a tall grass prairie and thats the reason Iowa's soil is so good. Organic matter built up for thousands of years and made Iowa soils the best in the world. People come from all over the world and marvel at our soil. They have never seen anything like it.

Cyclonesrule91 · 06-20-2008, 09:14 AM

Originally Posted by CyForPresident

Wetland soil is not exactly the greatest either. And I don't buy that Iowa was once a swamp, because it wasn't. It was a tall grass prairie and thats the reason Iowa's soil is so good. Organic matter built up for thousands of years and made Iowa soils the best in the world. People come from all over the world and marvel at our soil. They have never seen anything like it.

This was going to be my next post but you did it just as good if not better then what I was going to say.

Wx4Cy · 06-20-2008, 09:51 AM

Here's a simple test. Fill your bathtub with water and see where the water goes when the bathtub gets full. Now, turn the water off, drain the tub and plant some corn in your bathroom. Did the tub overflow?

huntt26 · 06-20-2008, 09:54 AM

Originally Posted by Wx4Cy

Here's a simple test. Fill your bathtub with water and see where the water goes when the bathtub gets full. Now, turn the water off, drain the tub and plant some corn in your bathroom. Did the tub overflow?

I'll try this right away and get back to you.

wait a minute....

Cyclonesrule91 · 06-20-2008, 09:59 AM

Originally Posted by Wx4Cy

Here's a simple test. Fill your bathtub with water and see where the water goes when the bathtub gets full. Now, turn the water off, drain the tub and plant some corn in your bathroom. Did the tub overflow?

Make sure you plant to corn from tub wall to tub wall and maybe even chisel out some of the wall to make sure you add another square centimeter too so you follow some of the idiot logic going on........

jbhtexas · 06-20-2008, 10:01 AM

Originally Posted by AirWalke

I think the reservoirs played a big part. I heard from a few engineers that the Saylorville Dam really is only supposed to be a flood regulator, but the land and boat owners around the area wanted it to be a recreational lake... so they keep the waters much higher than it's normally supposed to be.

This is a very good point. Unfortunately, this conflict is present at many flood control-turned-recreational lakes. Ideally, for flood control, the Corps would have looked at their meteorological and hydrological models, and drained the lake way down in anticipation of the flooding. I believe that the meterological models were predicting signficantly above normal precipitation in the midwest for those weeks when the strong high pressure ridge was locked in over Texas.

There's always the risk that the rain won't come to fill the lake back up. If the lake is strictly a flood control lake, that's no big deal. But turn the flood control lake into a recreational lake, and low lake levels become a big deal...

Wx4Cy · 06-20-2008, 10:18 AM

Originally Posted by huntt26

I'll try this right away and get back to you.

wait a minute....

I'm no scientist but i suspect you'll find that when you take away the never ending source of abundant water that is capable of dumping more water than the tub can hold away...the water will stop overflowing the tub.

Wesley · 06-20-2008, 10:35 AM

Originally Posted by jdoggivjc

My wife said something about a conversation she had yesterday about how a number of levees, at least along the Mississippi, but possibly across the Midwest, were supposed to be inspected after the flood of 1993 to make sure they were capable of standing up to another flood of that kind of magnitude. Apparently 15 years later and most of them never were. I don't know how accurate this statement is or whether it would have made a difference anyway considering just how bad the flooding was in certain areas this year, but considering the number of levees that have just given away during this flood that's the rumor that's going around now anyway.

For budgetary purposes, Congress never funded the $3M Gateway study for the water basin along Burlington corridor. I would think levees are inspected periodically. However, if you do not further study by not funding, you will never build higher levees. Most tof the levees that say water surged over were designed for 25-50 yr floods and maybe they had two feet of sandbags on top of the,. The money to build higher levees for ag fields is not economically justifiablel in most cases. Build an expensive ethanol plant in the area and the amount of levee you can afford will be more. Mother nature is a crap shoot.

Wesley · 06-20-2008, 10:40 AM

Originally Posted by ArathornClone

Interesting perspective about the land. I will admit one thing, in my personal opinion it rained ALOT more and more days in 1993 than this year yet the flood waters were higher this year. I don't remember the storms being as intense in '93 - more like a consistent light to medium rain about every darn day. It just seemed like it rained many more days in '93 than this year.

good point about the snow also. I don't remember what the winter in '92 was like but that could explain some of it since the ground was likely saturated this year.

I think this article is likely a mountain out of a mole hill. The farming (while surely a contributing factor) is probably a very minute contributor in the grand scheme of things and in something like statistics would be disregarded as insignificant, i.e. noise. But, the national media has political reasons for publishing this stuff.

Seems like the water dump was 6-10 inches for most areas in the last three weeks and this covered a large 11 river system of basins. This dumped further north in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa whereas 1993 mostly focused on Missouri rain. The Missouri flows into the Mississippi at St Louis. If you go upsteam on the Mississippi channel from St Louis the channel is smaller. Same amount of rain will cause more havoc abov St Louis than below SL. Seems like Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio were ht hard awhile back but the Ohio River was just one tributary of the miss and did not cause as much a problem on it. Iy probably dep[ends on how large an area has major runoff, how close are the rain events, and which basins are soaked.

TykeClone · 06-20-2008, 10:43 AM

Originally Posted by CyForPresident

Wetland soil is not exactly the greatest either. And I don't buy that Iowa was once a swamp, because it wasn't. It was a tall grass prairie and thats the reason Iowa's soil is so good. Organic matter built up for thousands of years and made Iowa soils the best in the world. People come from all over the world and marvel at our soil. They have never seen anything like it.

Parts Iowa were. Did you ever wonder why we have 99 counties and not 100?

Cyclone62 · 06-20-2008, 10:45 AM

I'm placing the blame at the feet of the Bush administration and Iran.

CloneIce · 06-20-2008, 10:45 AM

Originally Posted by isuno1fan

Interesting perspective...

I am not a proponent of how demand for corn for ethanol has caused every last acre of land to be plowed. This is likely a stretch, but who knows??

Man to blame for Iowa flooding? - Washington Post - MSNBC.com

Of course the land-useage bears some of the blame for flooding. It's no secret farming or developing land causes a major increase in runoff, any Engineer or anyone with an ounce of common sense will tell you that. Obviously the flood was much more potent that it would have been if Iowa received the same rain in 1750.

But what are you gonna do, stop farming? Its their land and the majority of people will work to make as much of a monetary profit from it as they can. As someone who enjoys fishing and hunting, obviously I'd like to see farmers practice better conservation efforts but its not like a couple of buffer strips or a little more land in CRP would have stopped the floods. And its not like the gov't can step in in the year 2008 and make all Farmers put a detention basin on their property for flood control.

CloneIce · 06-20-2008, 10:51 AM

Originally Posted by Wx4Cy

Here's a simple test. Fill your bathtub with water and see where the water goes when the bathtub gets full. Now, turn the water off, drain the tub and plant some corn in your bathroom. Did the tub overflow?

That's not even close to a correct representation of the situation.