Right answer, wrong question

The AP has an article on the recent flooding in the Midwest: "Floodwaters breached another levee in Illinois on Wednesday and threatened more Mississippi River towns in Missouri after inundating much of Iowa for the past week... About 25,000 people in Cedar Rapids were forced from their homes, 19 buildings at the University of Iowa were flooded and water treatment plants in several cities were knocked out. Now the floodwaters are a problem for communities such as Gulfport and Clarksville, Missouri... Later in the week, the Mississippi is expected to threaten a host of others communities, leading officials to consider evacuation plans and begin sandbagging... But even as the water jeopardized scores of additional homes and businesses, officials said the damage could have been worse if the federal government had not purchased low-lying land after historic floods in 1993 that caused $12 billion in damage. Since then, the government bought out more than 9,000 homeowners, turning much of the land into parks and undeveloped areas that can be allowed to flood with less risk. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has moved or flood-proofed about 30,000 properties. The effort required whole communities to be moved, such as Rhineland, Missouri, and Valmeyer, Illinois... The federal government bought about a quarter of the homes in Chelsea, Iowa, after the 1993 floods, but most of the 300 residents stayed. At least ten homes are now inundated by the Iowa River to their first floors... The National Weather Service expects crests this week along some Mississippi River communities near St. Louis to come close to those of 1993. The river at Canton, Mo., could reach 27.5 feet on Thursday, just shy of the 27.88 mark of 1993 and more than 13 feet above flood stage. Crests at Quincy, Ill., and Hannibal, Mo., are expected to climb to about 15 feet above flood stage, narrowly short of the high water from 15 years ago. In St. Louis, the Mississippi is projected to crest Saturday at 39.8 feet, about 10 feet above flood stage but still a foot lower than in 1993.

Rico says maybe the problem isn't the rain, but the Corps. As in the Corps of Engineers, who get paid (and would do it for the love it of, Rico is sure) to put up flood control levees. We all remember the levee issue in New Orleans when the hurricane hit, but this is just a slow-motion version of the same event: "More than 250 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers employees are supporting flood fighting efforts in Indiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. State support includes providing liaisons in State Emergency Operation Centers, flood fight technical assistance, and on-site community support. As of 17 June, the Corps has delivered 57 truckloads of water to logistical staging areas in Iowa and Illinois, and deployed more than 12 million sandbags, 1,200 rolls of plastic and 88 water pumps to the region." Yet if people stepped way back from the problem, the solution may be fewer levees, not more.
What? Is Rico crazy? Nope. All levees do is push the water downstream and make it someone else's problem. They don't like it, either, so they build levees of their own, and so on and so on until you get to the Gulf of Mexico, whereupon you dump all that dirt you've made the river carry a thousand miles out into the alluvial plain, making Louisiana bigger. Let us remember, however, that the newest parts of Louisiana are made up of parts of Indiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa, just misplaced farther south.
If we left the river alone, and tolerated some minor flooding in those northern states every spring, we'd keep the soil at home, avoid these catastrophic levee failures, and solve the tail-end problem at New Orleans and points south.
You heard it here first.