Normal flow on the mississippi river should be about 35,000 gps this time of year, and it made it down to about 62,000 this time around before they again started getting rain up north. So now it will be going up yet again making it much worse than last year, which was bad enough. This will be one of those rare years when the water was high all spring summer and fall.
Then there’s the mud problem coming out of the maquoketa river that dumps in muddy water into pool 13. Since that dam broke and washed away things got much worse. All the siltation the lake held back is now washing down river. They can’t stop it. They may never build another dam, so all that siltation will be coming for decades if not centuries. If you ask me they should follow it to the source, those farms where it comes from – but Iowa is a farm state and that’s all they care about is the farmer and will do nothing to regulate the soil being washed into the rivers and creeks.
All those people built those big houses on the lake are sitting high a dry because the lake is no more. Now they have docks sitting hundreds of yards away from the small shallow muddy river.
On the flip side, your tax dollars are going to be spent to rebuild this dam for the people with big houses built on the now dried up lake, which is a couple dozen maybe. 7 million $$ worth to a few people who didn’t take no for an answer and appealed fema’s decision twice. These are likely summer homes for wealthy republicans who complain about paying taxes. Lawyers maybe?
Yes, that was the flip side. In any case there is siltation moving down river with or without a dam, this I know. When I looked into it back in 2010 they said they were working on a fix, so I looked into today to see if they were doing anything about it yet. I ran across the story of the dam breaking and claim that is where the siltation is coming from. I know it’s not just because of the dam breaking because the problem has been around forever. I wonder if the claim of the dam breaking causing more siltation isn’t exaggerated or even fabricated to help in their cause of a dam rebuild. Meanwhile, the farmers whom are the source of all the siltation to begin with, aren’t mentioned at all. Nothing is really being done to fix the problem, but some wealthy people with summer homes on a dried up reservoir may get their lake back, on our dime. Look at the photo above, that doesn’t look like siltation beds to me. All that grass and vegetation probably filters the water and maybe the lake was part of the problem…?
I think what you have with the maquoketa river is a river that fluctuates greatly with rainfall. If the areas that flood were covered with vegetation, the soil wouldn’t erode IMO. But an unstable river is worthless to people who want to build houses close to it, and Iowa has a shortage of lakes and reservoirs so they built a dam to stabilize one section and form a reservoir. After a small cheaply made dam was built a couple dozen homes followed. Then the dam broke with high water and we get to rebuild it for a lucky few.
I am biased, I hate that river, it muddies the water with every rainfall. Fishing is much better above the Maquoketa River because the water is always cleaner. When that dam broke all the lillypads below that river on the Mississippi River all died, everywhere. There was a lot of chemicals that washed down with it, but not a word was said about it that I heard. I have been to that little town of Maquoketa twice. I hit a combine that pulled out in front of me while pulling a boat back in about 1980. The driver was drinking, but the Sheriff insisted it was my fault and gave me a ticket. He insisted I go to the hospital in Maquoketa which was many miles away, and I could have went other places that was closer. I was told I had to return to Maquoketa to see a judge in person about that ticket, which also wasn’t necessary, they just want to make money anyway they can from outsiders. That town is there because of of farmers, there is no other towns around. So the doctors, lawyers that are there have nothing but farmland. So to keep professionals there they have a country club, several parks, and the dam was built to form a lake in which these big houses were built on. So when the dam broke, you had doctors, lawyers and judges wanting it to be rebuilt at federal taxpayers expense through fema. This is my opinion anyway. All I know is there is rolling mud coming out of that river and they refuse to fix the real problem, which is the farmers. Like that judge told me, “this is a farm state boy, and we give farmers the right of way”. I used to go to Belview all the time I several times I saw a tractor driving down the highway at night with no lights whatever. That combine I hit had no lights or any warning whatever that he was going about 1 mph on the highway after pulling out in front of me.
