Authors Christine A. Klein and Sandra B. Zellmer have a lot in common. Both teach at law schools. Both shared in the writing of “Mississippi River Tragedies.” And, as they write in their preface, “We both grew up in the Mississippi River Basin, during a period when kids had plenty of room to play and explore outside.” Klein did her playing and exploring in Chesterfield, alongside a Mississippi River tributary, the Missouri River. Zellmer grew up on a farm outside Sioux City, Iowa, also close to the Missouri.
In their book, they explore what their subtitle calls “A Century of Unnatural Disaster” — the floods that have inundated large stretches of the Mississippi River Basin. Such floods struck in 1912, 1913, 1927, 1937, 1951, 1952 — and memorably in 1993.
The authors say that human efforts to rein in the rivers and develop the floodplains have made the floods even worse. Thus, their use of the term “unnatural disaster.” They refuse to acknowledge the floods as “acts of God.” In other words, they don’t blame God for the folly of humans. They say that flood-control projects, insurance subsidies and lawyerly ploys have raised the risk level.
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Their chapter on the Great Flood of 1993 will bring back memories of the devastation along the failed Monarch Levee in what we once called Gumbo Flats but have since rechristened Chesterfield Valley. They write that “the flood damage was so extensive that Chesterfield property owners, alone, collected almost 5 percent of the total federal insurance payments awarded throughout the entire nine-state area affected by the flood.”
Even so, they note, “By 2009, Chesterfield Valley supported over 830 businesses — more than triple the pre-flood tally.” They write that in 1993, the 380-acre tract that now houses Chesterfield Commons “had been submerged beneath eight feet of water.”
The authors recite three lessons for people living or doing business in floodplains: “1) Rivers will flood; 2) levees will fail; and 3) unwise floodplain development will happen if we let it.” Their solution: “It’s time to try something different: giving rivers room to flood. At the very least, we should think of sharing floodplains with their rivers.”
Alas, at too many times, the book reads like a law-school lecture, sure to glaze the eyes of readers without law degrees. What’s more, the authors detour readers into side trips to such topics as PCB contamination in North Carolina, coal-mining rights in Pennsylvania and minor flooding in downtown Alexandria, Va. And readers whose environmental consciences fall short of the authors’ may do some eye-rolling.
Still, an occasional gem pops up. The book reports that the headlines of 2011 about blowing up the Birds Point-New Madrid Levee to save Cairo, Ill., came as old news to Missouri farmers who had been around to see the same blowing-up in 1937.
And the authors say that down in Louisiana, despite the efforts of the Army Corps of Engineers, “the Mississippi is long overdue for another dramatic change of course. Many believe it is only a matter of time before the Mississippi overcomes its engineered strait-jacket and veers westward down the Atchafalaya channel,” isolating New Orleans.
And making St. Louis the center of Mardi Gras.
Harry Levins of Manchester retired in 2007 as senior writer of the Post-Dispatch.
‘Mississippi River Tragedies’
By Christine A. Klein and Sandra B. Zellmer
Published by NYU Press, 257 pages, $35