Flooded neighborhoods in St. Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, May 5, 2011
For some pundits, it’s becoming rather easy to pile up examples of recent wacky or extreme weather patterns and put the blame on “global warming.” This year alone, there have been freak snowstorms, prolonged winters, destructive tornadoes, massive tsunamis, out-of-control wildfires and, of course, rampant flooding. But is global warming really to blame? Are humans directly responsible for throwing the Earth’s weather systems out of kilter? And can we expect to see more floods in the near future?
In a province like Manitoba, which seems to face near-cataclysmic flooding every couple of years, words like “worst-ever” and “unprecedented” aren’t bandied about very lightly. Remember, this is a province where the capital city of Winnipeg is protected by a 50-year-old “Floodway,” a life-saving feat of engineering marvel designed to divert and control the flow of the Red River during spring runoff. The Floodway was constructed after the Red River Flood of 1950 destroyed a good portion of Winnipeg, but that flood was only the seventh highest on record since 1826. Those flood levels were surpassed in 1997, then again in 2009, and now for a third, and most dramatic, time in 2011.
As Brandon dealt with the spill-over from the severely engorged Assiniboine River, causing what officials called a “1-in-300-year flood” (a bit of an exaggeration), there were very real worries that things could go from bad to worse very quickly—things got so bad, in fact, that Greg Selinger, Premier of Manitoba, announced on Friday the 13 of May, that he was going to purposefully break a dike at the Hoop and Holler Bend near Portage-de-Prairie the next morning and flood an otherwise unaffected swath of land to the tune of 225 square kilometers, an area that included many rural towns and arable farmland. There was much outrage and consternation, but the waters couldn’t be held back.
Manitoba isn’t the only place experiencing higher-than-normal flooding this year: residents in cities along the Richelieu River in Quebec fled from their homes over a month ago as the water cascaded down from a swollen Lake Champlain and found its way into their basements. Heavy rainfall, unseasonal snowstorms and a late, slow winter thaw have all contributed to the “unprecedented” water levels, also said to be the highest “in over 140 years.” Due to heavy rainfall and lingering crests, the waters still haven’t receded. Neighborhood streets remain flooded and dealing with house mold has become the number one priority among non-evacuated residents.
There’s also the flooding in British Columbia to account for, where the rapidly melting snowpack pushed rivers higher and higher throughout the province. Water levels haven’t yet reached the city-flooding proportions of Manitoba or Quebec, but no one knows how quickly things might change or worsen. The main reason for the higher-than-normal rivers in BC is due to a record snowfall in the Kootenay mountains—recorded at its highest accumulation since 1991—and the later-than-normal spring thaw. Heavy rain and cloudy forecasts have only added to the worries.
The Mississippi River gushes out of the Morganza Spillway, opened for the first time since 1973
South of the border, states along the Mississippi River have also been dealing with record flood levels, but their situation is much more dire. Cities like Memphis, Tennessee, and Vicksburg, Mississippi, have been inundated by floodwaters. For the first time in 38 years—and for only the second time since it was built in 1954—authorities in Louisiana have opened the floodgates of the Morganza spillway and have loosed the destructive waters of the Mississippi on the flatlands of southern Louisiana, expecting the waters to spread over nearly 8000 square kilometers, decimating rich farmlands, fish farms and small towns before finally emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. These desperate measures have been undertaken to save larger cities like Baton Rouge and New Orleans—still not fully recovered from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005—from broken levees and further destruction. Unfortunately, the people who have been put in the path of the Mississippi deluge are some of the same who had to deal with the brutal consequences of the BP Deepwater oil spill just last March, a terrible run of luck that doesn’t look to be ending any time soon.
Speaking of the Gulf of Mexico, another calamitous side-effect of the Mississippi River flooding will be the unchecked dumping of fertilizer, manure, top soil, garbage and other prefabricated detritus washed downstream by the raging river waters into the deep blue ocean. This flood debris will not only further pollute the already–heavily polluted Gulf of Mexico, but the excessive amounts of untreated fertilizer, sewage and other waste products high in nitrates and phosphates will serve to exacerbate the western hemisphere’s largest dead zone, sapping the Gulf waters of what little oxygen and nutrients it has left (for more info, please read my other article, ”The Jellyfish Are Coming! The Jellyfish Are Coming!“).
But where is all this extra water coming from? And why is it showing up all at once? It seems logical to surmise that, as the polar ice caps melt as a result of man-made global warming, more water is being released from these 3000-year-old glaciers and is re-entering the water table as either rising sea levels or increased precipitation. This logic could be used to account for the higher-than-average snowfall dumped on a large portion of North America this past winter, the melting of which is causing most of these flooding headaches. But, global warming aside, we’ve experienced higher-than-average snowfalls in years past and haven’t pushed the panic button when the spring thaw hit and flooded our basements. So why is it any different now? Has the thought of global warming become so prevalent now that people have stopped looking for other explanations? Even though it’s entirely possible that global warming played a small part in our current flooding woes (only time will tell), I still don’t think it’s the sole culprit.
Homes on Mud Island sit in floodwater Tuesday, May 10, 2011, in Memphis, Tennessee. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
Other questions raised by all the flooding is the role of proper city planning and the proliferation of urban sprawl. As our cities get more and more crowded, municipal planners keep looking for new parts of the city to develop. Eventually, areas of the city that were previously considered undesirable or risky, like floodplains or along riverbanks, are snapped up and filled with condos and duplexes. New residents, lured in by promises of “river-front living” and lower mortgages, don’t even recognize the threat of living so close to such an unpredictable body of water, which most of the time is relatively harmless but still harbours the potential of wreaking the massive damage we’re seeing now. For example, in Memphis, Tennessee, the worst flooding occurred in neighborhoods on Mud Island, a riverside community built up in just the past 20 years. Now, logic would dictate that the name “Mud Island” wasn’t plucked randomly from a hat but actually has some connection to the type of land that existed there before development began—and, truth be told, a name like “Flooded So Often That Grass Won’t Even Grow Here Island” just doesn’t have the same cachet. If these “danger areas” were left undeveloped just in case a monster flood like this one came ripping through the city, there would be a lot less damage and a lot less displaced, angry, frustrated residents filling the hotels.
The other problem with the current city-development scheme is the proliferation of urban sprawl. As our cities expand, we need to develop more neighborhoods for people to live in, which means more roads and more schools and more shopping centers and more parking lots. To make room for all these things, construction crews go into pristine landscapes, rip up trees and shrubs and existing vegetation, remove all the dirt to lay pipes, gas lines and sewers, then re-grade the land and build on top of the new levelled surface. They pour concrete foundations for houses, asphalt tarmacs for roads and cement pads for parking lots. All of this new development completely changes the make-up of the land, destroying natural water channels, natural drainage patterns and, worst of all, uprooting hundred-year-old tree growth and their potent water-sucking abilities.
To compensate for completely raping the land, they install storm drains and gutters to help guide the water into the sewers and away from the surface. But all this excess water, instead of filtering down naturally through the soil and into tree-roots and underground reservoirs, is now funnelled through a couple of miles of sewers and is dumped directly into nearby rivers or lakes or other bodies of water, which, during flood season, shouldn’t be forced to handle all the extra run-off. Some of our current flooding problems have no doubt been exacerbated by the water management practices of local municipalities.
Beyond the looming threat of global warming, spring floods are sure to become a recurring theme over the next decade. We probably won’t have record floods like this one every year (hopefully), but so long as our society continues to ignore the tenets of sustainable development (ie. installing gray water systems to reduce, and maximize, water use) and refuses to curb its overzealous building habits, our streets might start looking like Vienna and we’ll all be canoeing our way to work. Don’t laugh—it’s already happening in Quebec.
Paddling on the Richelieu River, Monday, May 9, 2011, Saint-Paul-de-l'Ile-aux-Noix, Quebec (Ryan Remiorz/THE CANADIAN PRESS)
