Nature trumps decades of effort (flood control)

[phantom power]

Build a 10-foot levy, and sooner or later climate change is gonna serve you up with an 11 foot flood.

When last weekend 's storms dropped as much as a foot of rain on southwest Wisconsin, the muddied waters of the Kickapoo River rose by 10 feet in just a day, swelling to a record nearly five feet above flood level.

While the historic rains lasted, they short-circuited a half-century of progress in reducing floods in the region, straining earthen dams, overtopping levees and wreaking tens of millions of dollars in damages.

"That exceeded any previous flood " on the Kickapoo in the 75 years of available records, Herb Garn, assistant director of the U.S. Geological Survey office in Middleton, said of the storms.

Experts said that, in spite of major gains made since the 1950s in improving farming practices and controlling floods in the steep valleys of the Driftless Area, the storms show how difficult it can be to control such historic rains. With nature at its absolute worst, one of the few ways to save homes and businesses is to make sure they 're built out of the path of floods in the first place, they said, adding that affected communities such as Gays Mills should consider that fact as they rebuild.

http://www.madison.com/wsj/topstories/index.php?ntid=207225

[StClone]

1. Beautiful area should be lightly farmed

Steep valleys with meandering streams, dividing large plateaus lend to the belief it is tillable. But when nature calls for big rain it quickly turns the landscape into massively flooded corridors shooting to the Mississippi.