Flood

With the great Mississippi flood of 1927 quietly seeping into the Gulf of Mexico, attention turned toward preventing the river from ever again driving valley-dwellers from their homes in hundreds of thousands. It appears certain that the levee system will continue to carry the main burden of flood prevention, but various adjuncts to it have been insistently urged.

Reforestation. A frequently brought forward measure of flood-control has been reforestation. One objection to this scheme is that the Mississippi went on one of the greatest floods of its history in 1844 when the valley was thickly forested.

Reservoirs. A system of reservoirs in the upper reaches of streams tributary to the Mississippi would, it is claimed, absorb the spring overflow of these streams, thus catching the floods at an early stage and eliminating them. Such a system would, however, be tremendously expensive (Dayton, Ohio, alone spent $30,000,000 on a reservoir project after the 1913 Dayton Flood), and would not affect rain-swollen streams at points below the reservoir sites.

Basins. A sort of dry-reservoir idea is proposed in a system of basins--stretches of lowlands bordering the river and surrounded by levees. These basins would be dry land in normal times, at flood period an opening would be made in the levees and the basin flooded, thus taking up some of the overflow. These basins could be owned by the Government and rented out for private farming with the understanding that they would have to be inundated in flood time.

Spillways. The most promising and most seriously considered flood-control method is the spillway. The Atchafalaya River is a good example of a natural spillway. It flows, roughly speaking, parallel to the Mississippi through Louisiana. By building strong levees all along its length to the Gulf it could be turned into a kind of trough which would draw off water from the Mississippi itself. In the present flood the Atchafalaya did, in a way, perform exactly this function; unfortunately, however, it received altogether too much water so that the later stages of the flood were along the Atchafalaya, not along the Mississippi. If, however, its levee system were strengthened and if additional spillways were constructed at other strategic points, another flood, split into many sections, might well remain under control. The spillway system has long been advocated by the people of Louisiana, especially of New Orleans.

Levees. Popular confidence in the levee system has been shaken, if not destroyed, by their failure to prevent the present flood from inundating some 20,000 square miles and making homeless some 600,000 people. But expert opinion still clings to them as the backbone of flood prevention. Doubtless they will, in the future, be built higher and stronger, but, as far as can at present be determined, the levee will always carry the main burden of confining the river and to it all other methods will be not more than adjuncts, auxiliaries. Writing for the New York World Herbert C. Hoover said: "The levee system needs to be revised and strengthened and, above all, we must have some other safety devices which will relieve the strain on the levee system in periods of super-floods and make them absolutely sure once and for all. . . . We cannot abolish the levee system."

Meanwhile in Arkansas, Illinois and Missouri a new flood was driving valley-dwellers away from the homes to which they had returned with the receding of the flood waters which now are running into the Gulf of Mexico. The new flood, caused by heavy rains, is not so great as its predecessor, but passes through a country whose shattered levees offer relatively little resistance. Crops, hastily planted in still muddy ground, have been inundated again, and from 15,000 to 20,000 persons in Arkansas alone were once more forced to abandon their homes before the new onrush.

In Louisiana, official evidence that the main flood is over was furnished by the resignation of onetime Governor John M. Parker as Relief Director. "The life-saving stage of the flood is over and my share of the task is done," he said. He added: "I feel it my duty to pay tribute to those whose work has been of untold value to the Mississippi Valley and especially to Herbert Hoover whose powers of organization, engineering and deep interest in humanity have again been manifested in saving more life and property than ever before in his memorable career."