Back off man, I'm a scientist.

So yesterday at dinner Collette and I were talking about the flood at Lake Delton in Wisconsin. If you don't know about it yet here is a brief synopsis: After receiving copious amounts of rain in a relatively short time span a reservoir overran its banks spilling water around the dam eventually causing the dam to collapse. As you can imagine, a lot of water was released and a few homes were destroyed and carried away. There was quite a bit of video footage of the erosional forces at work and it was pretty spectacular how quickly the soil was removed undermining the footings of these summer homes and eventually destroying them completely.


As a budding scientist interested in fluvial processes, and especially erosional forces of rivers I reflected on the the engineering and geo-technical research that would have been necessary to build the dam that eventually burst. Surely the geologist and engineers knew the limits of the dam (especially when the height of the water was higher than the dam itself). You don't have to be an engineer to realize that your dam isn't high enough when water is pouring over the top. Anyway, since Collette is taking an in depth statistics course we talked about the probability associated with these types of storm events. You may or may not know this but all engineering decisions are based not only on the science of what has happened in the past but the probability of things that are going to happen. When the Lake Delton dam was built (or the New Orleans dikes for that matter) the engineers most likely designed multiple bridge strengths for different rain events. These rain events were then assigned some number relating how likely such a large storm would be. Of course building a stronger dam, or dike, or bridge costs more money. The cost would then be weighed against the probability of catastrophe, and then some non-scientist or engineer would decide which dam to build. That's right some politician or lobbyist or whatever (probably a know nothing lawyer) would decide how much money there was to spend and choose the cheapest dam. Now I understand that over engineering our infrastructure would not be a good thing to do, but I feel that too much of our infrastructure here in the U.S. was built by the lowest bidder with minimal safety in mind. No way should the dikes of New Orleans have failed during a category four hurricane. The area routinely gets category three hurricanes... didn't you think a four was just around the corner?

Now I know you all think I am going to go off on another capitalist rant here but I am not. I will not bring up the fact that capitalism ruins everything. (ha ha too late) What I will say however is that building permanent cities is dangerous business. Just think of all the environmental alterations necessary to make a permanent settlement. For example rivers are supposed to flood. That is what they do. Problem is a flooding river is hard to build houses next to. So we build a dam. Is your harbor filling up with sand and you are worried about getting your fishing boat out to sea? Worry no longer as the Corp of Engineers is here to dredge the bottom of the bay so your boat can still get in and out. For thousands of years the Mississippi River has meandered freely back and forth creating the Louisiana delta. It no longer has this ability as it is dredged and concreted into place. Why? To keep a steady flow of ships, and ultimately money coming into the south. Are you living in a desert? Where is your water coming from? Reservoirs, depleting of ground water? Either way stressing water supplies has caused droughts all over the U.S. and the world. I could go on and on. So where should humans live? In what type of setting could man exist that wouldn't completely screw up the surrounding ecosystems yet support a few million of us? You guessed it...man should exist nomadically. Hey it worked for thousands of years, why not now? Think about it. No more problems with water - just wander where it is raining. Too much rain? Walk a few degrees south in latitude and blamooo... sunshine. Need food? Just follow the bison west during the spring and summertime and we are all living like fat cats. Humans are hunter/gathers and it seems we have forgotten who we are with all this city building. So...what say you men? Who is with me? Who will gather their tepee, saddle their horse and throw off the bonds of civilization?
No one?
I figured as much. I just hope that the probability of disaster is low enough and the inexpensive infrastructure survives until Madden09 comes out. It will be so sick. Good Luck.