Wet and Wild

A couple years ago I postulated that as the climate changed the real net effect would be warmer wetter autumns, winters and springs and some very hot dry summers. 

 

Kind of like what happens in a terrarium when it warms up.  Some parts dry out, lots of parts get very wet.  Water drips off the glass.

 

As the globe warms we will see more intense storms and floods.  The answer is we must begin to learn to hold the water on the land.  That means retention in swamps.  That's what was there before we as people decided to drain the swamps to grow more corn for ethanol. ;>((

 

I remember when I moved to Chicagoland asking some of my new acquaintances at work, what do they do with all the water, how do they manage such a huge impervious watershed?  These were not country folks.  Watershed was not in the Chicago vocabulary.  But I looked at huge paved areas with drainage to grated drains.  That water has to go somewhere.  I knew it would spell trouble. 

 

In fact is does.  Two days ago Rockford for the second time in 2 years was flooded.  8+ inches in a couple hours. That's a lot of rain.

In today's paper are pictures of the people standing in water. 

 

In Aberdeen SD last spring after a huge rainfall the same thing happened.  People were walking in knee deep water.

 

So what do army corps types do?  They dig deeper ditches to take it faster to underflow-capable rivers which floods folks downstream.  What needs to happen is to keep that water trapped in swamps, sloughs, ditches and other wetlands to allow for percolation and evaporation (and ducks). 

 

We have to quit treating our rivers like sewer pipes. 

 

I worked with the folks at BP who are in deep weeds with the state of IL because they are about to dump high nitrate and mercury effluent (waste water) into Lake Michigan.  In the past I worked with them to establish estuary like areas where that effluent could go and stand in weedy reedy areas and undergo some level of transformation before heading for the lake.  It worked.  But now they have expanded their production capability.

 

They should also expand that estuary project rather than trying to work with the EPA to "Get By".

 

The fact is as the climate changes we are going to get a lot of bigger meaner storms and lots more big weather events.  We can do better by not aggravating the situation and trying to pretend it will go away by dumping the water downstream.  It won't.

 

Learn to hold it.