The Wanganui Chronicle SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1927. THE MISSISSIPPI FLOODS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19828, 30 April 1927, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1927. THE MISSISSIPPI FLOODS

The terribly disastrous visitation which has descended upon the people of the Mississippi basin affords another proof of the fact that Nature is always ready to call up fresh resources against the effort of Man to harness her to his own ends. Man has gone far in his fight against Nature. But. he has not, perhaps never will conquer her; he holds her only.in leash which may break at any moment. Like the great Yang-tse-Kiang in China, the Mississippi carries an enormous quantiy of silt. Most of this is deposited at their mouths, there to form deltas which grow year by year in extent. But a great deal is dropped on their beds, with the result that the level of these is continually rising. In many parts of their courses, the two rivers are actually above the level of the surrounding country. Stopbanks keep the land dry at normal times, but when floods occur these are frequently overflowed. Vast tracts are then covered with water, and, in the case of the Yang-tse, the toll taken of human life is sometimes counted, not in hundreds, but even in hundreds of thousands. The communities living in the Mississippi Valley have given much attention to the building of stop banks, or levees as they eall them, to keep the waters to their proper channel and to protect the country adjoining from inundation. Millions of dollars have been spent on these works, and ordinarily they are effective, though, like all works of a similar nature, they cost much in maintenance. The present gigantic flood reveals rather a curious position in regard to these. In some areas they have either broken or been overflowed, with the result that large tracts have been covered with water, numerous lives lost, and enormous damage done. At New Orleans, however, the levees have held. The New Orleans levees are quite a feature of the city’s topography, and have been very solidly constructed at great cost. But their solidity in the present? crisis has a disadvantage. The volume of water flow has been enormously increased, but the outfall still remains the same. Because the confined channel cannot carry the flood waters off fast enough they are spreading over the areas upriver. . So it is proposed to break some of the New Orleans levees in order to facilitate the water’s escape. This does not suit many New Orleans people who are reported to be gathering in armed strength and threatening violence and bloodshed if such work be proceeded with. It is a curious example of local prejudice against the wider national interest. The Mississippi basin covers one and a quarter million square miles, almost half the area of Australia. The main river and its tributaries combined have a waterway length of 15,000 miles, more than half the span of the globe. These figures will perhaps enable some realisation of the tremendous discharge through the New Orleans delta even at normal times, and perhaps even an idea of what it must be when, as at the present, the spring season causes the melting of the heavy snows in the northern latitudes and in the mountain regions where these waters rise.