Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/26

22 remove from the immediate benefit of the deep waterways project those important communities which hope for renewed navigation on the Missouri.

If the entire lower Mississippi were given a new course free from sharp bends, as could be done readily by cutting through the successive necks, the sapping and caving of banks would cease and the distance from St. Louis to New Orleans would be lessened nearly by half. That this plan is entirely feasible is amply demonstrated by the success of the Germans in correcting and straightening the Rhine. The Rhine, if possible, presented a more difficult problem than does the Mississippi, but the German engineers recognized the fact that where sharp bends exist it is impossible to prevent entirely undermining and caving of the banks. Acting on this principle, it was decided to give the river a practically new course, less winding than the former, and in which future control is insured. Unfortunately, this procedure applied to the Mississippi would not be an adequate remedy for the floods, nor would it effectively prevent the formation of sand bars. It is unquestioned, however, that the flood stages would run off more rapidly and a greater amount of sand would be scoured from the channel, since in a shortened course the river would have a steeper descent and consequently a more rapid flow with increased carrying power. The corrected course undeniably has much to recommend it, aside from the mere facts of feasibility and a shorter route.

If the high-water stages of floods could be prevented and the flow of the river controlled, the practical solution of the question would be at hand, for the major part of the sediment is washed into the streams incident to the flood time, and the excessive flood volume causes most of the caving of banks. For a good many years the federal government has been at work on the Mississippi, building levees to control or prevent floods, placing revetments along the banks to check the caving action, and operating powerful sand pumps to remove the shifting bars. It is estimated that in the last forty years the government has spent all of $225,000,000 on the Mississippi and its more important tributaries, not a single dollar of which has gone toward permanent improvement, except in the case of the jetties at the mouth, the slack water dams on the Ohio and the removal of rock ledges at a few points. Fifty million dollars of the total amount has gone into the construction of some 1,400 miles of levees and revetments along the lower course, but before the national government undertook the task of control, the states of Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas had already spent not less than $40,000,000 toward the same end. Enough similar work has been done at one time or another by private individuals, so that, first and last, the levee-revetment system to date represents an outlay of fully $100,000,000. Yet not one cent has been devoted to the control of the excessive floods which come almost every