Two interesting stories from the front pages today about the Midwest flooding.
Call for Change Ignored, Levees Remain Patchy
CANTON, Mo. — The levees along the Mississippi River offer a patchwork of unpredictable protections. Some are tall and earthen, others aging and sandy, and many along its tributaries uncataloged by federal officials.
The levees are owned and maintained by all sorts of towns, agencies, even individual farmers, making the work in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri last week of gaming the flood — calculating where water levels would exceed the capacity of the protective walls — especially agonizing.
After the last devastating flood in the Midwest 15 years ago, a committee of experts commissioned by the Clinton administration issued a 272-page report that recommended a more uniform approach to managing rising waters along the Mississippi and its tributaries, including giving the principal responsibility for many of the levees to the
Army Corps of Engineers.
But the committee chairman, Gerald E. Galloway Jr., a former brigadier general with the Corps of Engineers, said in an interview that few broad changes were made once the floodwaters of 1993 receded and were forgotten.......
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/us...er&oref=slogin
Midwest floods' economic fallout uncertain
[COLOR=#333333! important]With thousands of acres submerged, the outlook seems dire, but it's still too early to say how the disaster will affect food prices and other economic gauges.[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#999999! important]By Richard Fausset, P.J. Huffstutter and Stephen Braun, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
June 22, 2008 [/COLOR]
ELSBERRY, MO --
. -- Frayed optimism is the best that flood-weary Midwest residents can cling to after a harrowing month of battering rainstorms and swollen rivers that overtopped sodden levees in Iowa and then in Illinois and Missouri.
The signs of economic fallout seem evident from the stark televised images: thousands of acres of fields submerged, towns isolated by muddy moats, barges and trains stalled, families left homeless.
But the contours of the flood's dislocation are still uncertain, economists and agriculture experts say, and might well be mitigated if the region is spared more high water in the critical coming weeks. A month of dry, balmy weather could spell the difference between a limited disaster and the kind of full-scale crisis that gripped the upper Mississippi River basin for months after the historic floods of 1993.
"The economy's a lot more flexible than we give it credit for," said Richard Mattoon, a senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago. "The tough question is how much the flood will change the picture for the Midwest and the national economy -- or will it only reinforce trends that were already going on?"
How deep the misery goes, how long it lasts and how far it spreads to the nation and the world beyond depends on time, weather and a global economy already under stress.
When farmers crowded into their regular tables at Rachel's Restaurant on Friday morning in the Mississippi River town of Elsberry, they shared the few silver linings they could muster -- and commiserated over the grim tidings that seemed to be spreading as inexorably as the river.
After already having lost half of his 1,600 acres of corn and beans to the Mississippi, Steve Gray still held out hope that he will get by. "I'll make it some way," he said.
Market analysts have offered up dire warnings of a paralyzed heartland and record crop prices that could set off inflationary spirals throughout the national and world economy. On Thursday, the Rural Mainstreet Index, a monthly survey of more than 200 bank executives in 10 Midwest states, found that more than 41% said they expected the recent floods to "have a significant impact" on America's heartland economy......
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...0,525636.story
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