Vol. 72/No. 27      July 7, 2008

The floods are the worst disaster in the United States since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). But as the waters begin to recede, evidence is growing that profit-driven decisions by capitalist industrialists and farmers played no small part in the scope of the damage done.

FEMA assured residents of Gulfport, Illinois, that their town would withstand a “historic flood.” On June 17, the levee gave way and Gulfport was submerged in 10 feet of water. In this town of 750 people along the Mississippi, only 28 had flood insurance.

In 1993 a flood caused $20 billion in damage across the Midwest and took 48 lives. Like this year’s it was classified as a 500-year flood, meaning there is a 0.2 percent chance of a flood of that extent in any given year.

Today many are asking: how is it possible to have two 500-year floods within 15 years?

At least 22 levees in three states have been topped or breached in the course of this month’s flooding. According to the Christian Science Monitor, “the flooding has raised questions about the adequacy of the patchwork system—in which little information is known about where levees exist, who maintains them, and what their condition is.”

There is no federal oversight of the levee system, a FEMA spokesperson said. Following Hurricane Katrina, Congress passed a bill to develop an inventory and inspect levees, but it was never implemented.

There are other problems with the system. Levees change the shape of rivers, confining and squeezing their natural course, which causes problems downstream. They can force water to go higher and faster and transform the capacity of rivers to absorb floods. Continual capitalist development along rivers reduces further the amount of flood plain available to absorb water.

The extensive flooding has opened a discussion about the failed levee system and flood-control measures. Much of it focuses on the need to allow rivers to reclaim their natural flood plain and to revamp the levees. This is not a new debate.

To qualify for flood insurance, structures must be protected by a levee built to a 100-year standard. The 100-year standard is considered a “joke,” according to John Barry, a member of the flood control authority in New Orleans. “We invest on the cheap.”

In the Netherlands, levees for ocean flooding are built to a 10,000-year standard; and inland levees are designed to at least a 250-year standard, and usually in excess of 1,250 years.

The cumulative impact of turning Iowa’s productive farmland into profits for agribusiness and larger and larger capitalist farms has made the land more vulnerable to flooding.

Heavy rains fell on a landscape radically reengineered by humans, Kamyar Enshayan, director of an environmental center at the University of Northern Iowa, pointed out in an interview with the Washington Post. Paraphrasing Enshayan, the Post said that “plowed fields have replaced tall grass prairies. Fields have been meticulously drained with underground pipes. Streams and creeks have been straightened. Most of the wetlands are gone. Flood planes have been filled and developed.”  
 
 
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