500 Year Flood Submerges Iowa
June 16th, 2008Via: ENS Newswire:
“Nearly one third of Iowa is already under water and water levels continue to rise,” said U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, urging federal financial assistance for his state. Waters are still rising in many parts of the state and the president responded.
On Sunday, after touring some of the worst flooded areas, U.S. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa announced a federal disaster declaration for 13 Iowa counties – Adam, Boone, Cerro Gordo, Crawford, Dallas, Dubuque, Floyd, Franklin, Marion, Page, Story, Tama and Union, bringing the number of counties under this designation to 24.
Now that the counties have been declared, residents and businesses can begin applying for federal disaster assistance.
“These new disaster declarations are vital as we begin the recovery process in some parts of our state. Now more Iowans can apply for assistance and get the help they need,” said Harkin. “Still, there is much more work to be done and I will continue to see to it that other affected counties receive federal assistance.”
On the state level, Governor Chet Culver has issued a disaster proclamation for 83 counties. The governor’s proclamation activates Iowa’s individual disaster assistance program, which helps people with low incomes.
Meanwhile, the flooding, evacuations and road closures continue across the state.
The National Weather Service called flooding in Cedar Rapids a “historic hydrologic event” Thursday as the river over-topped its banks at 500-year flood levels, forcing the evacuation of nearly 4,000 homes.
Would it be too much to ask if TPTB take a few water samples? Apparently the houses are being declared unfit to live in but is this because they have been “contaminated” is this because they are wet?
Here’s what hasn’t emerged in the Iowa flood stories: Iowa floodwaters are a literal cess-pool of sewage, not to mention agriculture chemicals. The state is famous for cow-towing to industrial animal confinement operations (CAFOs), which create two things in great abundance: low-quality meat and manure. And a good deal more of the latter than the former.
Floodwaters anywhere in the Midwest invariably wash away vast quantities of manure from sewage tanks and lagoons, and this makes flood-waters extremely infectious. People are very often stricken with life-threatening illnesses even many weeks later following a flood clean-up.
Also, I’ll say from my personal experience that CAFO owners are not always the most conscionable of people. Since they frequently find themselves hard-pressed to dispose of their sewage in approved manners such as field-spreading, and judging by the frequent number of “accidental” spills these operations seem prone to, my personal belief is that there’s a good likelyhood that some of the more enterprising operators took advantage of this flooding to empty their tanks into “Mother Natures flush of the toilet”.
Oh, and of course I’d imagine many human sewage-treatment plants are probably emptying into the Mississippi as well…
Enjoy, New Orleans!
I don’t know why disasters that effect large amounts of people distress me so much. I do think though that I have disaster fatigue. Yep. Just when we need a bumper crop to protect the world from mass starvation, we lose food production. Surely, if the gods were crazy they couldn’t have planned this disaster better.
Maybe there’s a light (sure but I do look for one!). Perhaps without all the corn, food will go back to being sweetened with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup that the human body can’t assimilate anyway.
Yes indeed. The gods are crazy. Here at the Motel 6 the woman next to me is freaking out about real estate prices plunging.
Not where her next taco (corn based) will come from.
“…Maybe there’s a light (sure but I do look for one!). Perhaps without all the corn, food will go back to being sweetened with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup that the human body can’t assimilate anyway.”
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings Eileen, but that would not be an improvement in a financial, industrial or nutritional sense. Several other senses also come to mind, but that’s just piling on.
Refined sugar is the nutritional equivalent of heroin. It wasn’t until I was able to become 100% free of its sweet siren song that the last of “mystery” health issues (at least to modern medicine) finally subsided for good.
The greatest irony of all is that the ingredients in my daily intake would shock most “health-conscious” people, and put the industrial eaters right off their meal. High-grade cod liver oil. Our own pork schmalz. Raw egg from our chickens in our olive oil-based mayo. Raw milk and several varietes of our own soured milk products, as well as raw butter and double cream from the same happy cows.
Meanwhile, in addition to all that CAFO sewage, aggro-agrichem and human offal currently working its way downstream, there’s also the toxic stew of chemicals from house and home and flooded industrial facilities — which promises a nasty aftermath for those unlucky enough to encounter elements of the mess in high enough concentrations. Dilution and turbulence work to everyone’s advantage over time in terms of direct exposure, but concentrations in the areas directly adjacent to the sources could be particularly hard hit. Then there’s the gazillions of tons of residue when the waters recede.
Not a pretty picture.
Of course, choosing to live on the flood plain of a mighty river — even at the 500- or 1000 year waterline — is a calculated risk. And most of the folks whose lives have been submerged just gambled and lost their lot to the house. Not a wager I’ll be making in this lifetime. A ridge five hundred meters above sea level suits us just fine.