Too Much Water

Although it did not impact my corner of the Ozarks, I want to mention the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1993.  This summer is the 25th anniversary of the most devastating flood in modern U. S. history according to the U. S. Geological Survey. 

In April 2017 we had flash flooding in the southern Ozarks, and it was devastating.  But when the Mississippi, Illinois, Missouri, Des Moines, and other rivers spread out over 400,000 acres in nine state in 1993, 47 people lost their lives. 

This image is from the Quad City Times:


It was a terrible summer all along the major Midwestern rivers.  Over 1,000 levees broke.  The flooding lasted 200 days in some places.  The damages cost $25 billion. 

Emergency volunteers were put to work all along the rivers filling sandbags to try to save the levees.  Illinois Department of Natural Resources fisheries biologists took their boats to the Illinois and Mississippi rivers to transport sandbags.  Actually the DNR lost some boats and motors in that effort.

In far southern Illinois a levee break allowed the Mississippi River waters to flow across farms and homes to dump into the Ohio River creating a new temporary channel.  I witnessed the scars and deposits of gravel in the middle of productive crop land.  For months farmers and levee districts removed gravel deposits and rebuilt levees. 

The historic city of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, was saved.  If the flood had crossed into that area, it would have been in the Ozarks, although not "my corner". 

In July 1993 I stood on the steps leading down to the Mississippi River at the Gateway Arch grounds in St. Louis. The river was lapping at the upper steps at that time.  It was a scary scene. 

An article, "Where Dark Waters Raged", in the August Missouri Conservationist describes the flood of 1993 and tells of subsequent restoration, including development of fish and wildlife habitat out of disaster.  That's what we do.  We rise from the mud and gravel and build something new.