Storm water, levees and flooding

As we recently saw the Meramec river flooded a number of places along its banks.  Spared this year was Valley Park — their costly new levee keep the flood water at bay.  But at what price?  I don’t man the cash spent for construction but the impact to those up river.

One such casualty is the town of Pacific.  Some will say that Pacific floods anyway.  True enough.  However when you have a certain volume of water coming down the river it must go somewhere — if a levee keeps it from naturally spreading out then the crest gets higher until the water backs up and finds a spot where it can spread — the next point up river without a levee or one that is lower.

So while levees are part of the problem so is sprawl.  Runoff from all the streets, parking lots and such make matters worse.  We are responsible for the factors that caused our recent flooding issues — by messing with the natural flow of water and with adding acres upon acres of impervious surfaces.  I say we begin to undo the mess we’ve created — remove a bulk of the impervious surfaces like parking lots and then remove the levees.