The Sioux City Journal has a great piece on the floods;

“Because people are lulled into believing floods will never come, people began building right up to the river. I think the building of Dakota Dunes symbolizes that,” he said. “I think, again, they’re putting their faith in the Corps of Engineers and dams in South Dakota to protect their property.”

As the Missouri River has flooded in recent days, frustrated property owners have criticized the corps for its management of the river. Many want to know why the corps didn’t begin releasing water from reservoirs earlier when it knew there was above-average snowfall in the mountains.

Why? Well because government doesn’t like change;

Col. Bob Ruch, commander of the Corps of Engineers Omaha Division, said the corps follows a master manual to set reservoir releases during the fall and winter so that once spring arrives and the snow melts, there is enough room to hold the influx of water.

Imagine if private industry worked like that? There would be no innovation, no new technologies.

5 Thoughts on “More on the Mo

  1. rufusx on June 6, 2011 at 8:45 pm said:

    Where do you get the notion that private business doesn’t act on “speculation” about the future, based on “precedent” that then ends up creating “big economic bubbles” that “burst” contrary to the “traditional model”?

  2. l3wis on June 6, 2011 at 9:06 pm said:

    Ruf – Are you talking about the financial industry or science and technology?

  3. anooner on June 7, 2011 at 9:48 am said:

    As Palin heads west on her Magical Mystery Freedom WTF is it Tour, you may hear her proclaim:

    “The Bridges are Flooding, The Bridges are Flooding!”

    This will be done in part to warn the doggone river that it is not just gonna come in here to places where we have houses and those things like that, and put that flood water around those things.

  4. Pathloss on June 7, 2011 at 10:58 am said:

    Once everything is flooded, rebuild but make it Arks with 2 of each kind (republicans excepted).

  5. rufusx on June 7, 2011 at 11:00 am said:

    Havong worked in technology R and D – I know that such endeavors require support from the financial industry to come to fruition. The TECH BUBBLE BURSTING (in whic investors who had been support tech R and D decided to fold theire wallets and put ’em in their pockets, in favor of sepculating ELSEWHERE) is WHY I am currently an extremely underemployed SD resident. Summary – $$$ talks when it comes to R and D innovation.

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