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[quote user="penncentral2002"][quote user="futuremodal"][quote user="jeaton"] Looking at the several links to the history of the Corp of Engineers, we find that Congress was responding to the needs to improve navagation as early as 1850, just about 57 years before the Sprague set the record for tow size.[/quote]And this means what?  The real channel improvements didn't even start until the mid 20th century.  Before that, it was mostly snag removal and such.[/quote]Yet the very next page after the one that you cite states "In 1896, Congress authorized a navigation channel 9 feet deep and 250 feet wide at low water between Cairo and Head of Passes."  That definitely sounds like a channel improvement to me.[/quote]Are you suggesting the Mississippi's average channel depth is less than 9 feet below Cairo?  Of course not.  That "9 feet" is the depth desired for consistant navigation, including some in channel straightening.  Most of the river below Cairo is deeper than 9 feet, isn't it?[quote]The only section of the Mississippi which is naturally suited to large scale navigation is the section south of Baton Rouge.  Baton Rouge got its name because the early French explorers found that there were dangerous rapids and it was the furthest that they could take their ships.  They marked these rapids with a red stick or in French, a baton rouge.  Small flat boats could travel from upper Mississippi and Ohio River to Baton Rouge naturally, but no further.  Thus almost all navigation on the Mississippi River is completely unnatural (as is almost all of the Mississippi River today).[/quote]That's quite a statement - "all navigation on the Mississippi is completely unnatural".  Hard to give you any credibility there, given that the river has been used for navigation long before railroads were even "invented".  Again, most improvements on the river are at particular points on the river.  You make is sound like the river has been turned into a de facto canal.  PS - "ships" generally refers to ocean going vessels, so it's not suprising that ships of yore couldn't make it past Baton Rouge, nor can they today.[quote]You are also missing another segment of costs associated with Mississippi River navigation.  The canalization of the Mississippi has created serious environmental damage on the Louisiana coast because it prevents the silt from flowing down the river and resupplying the Mississippi Delta region.  Thus, Louisiana is losing land.  There is very strong evidence that the hurricanes in the gulf region, including Hurricane Katrina hit land stronger due to the erosion of the Mississippi Delta.  Additionally, the canalization of the Mississippi has caused the floods when they occur to become much worse.  The budget doesn't come anywhere close to showing the past environmental damage that the conversion of the Mississippi from a river to a canal has caused.  The costs of the EIS and the like (which is generally a small part of the total project cost) are neccessary expenditures to prevent much larger damage later.  People today are just starting to learn the horrible costs of the canalization of the Mississippi (even though the 1927 Mississippi River flood also demonstrated them and led to Congress to pass the 1928 Flood Control Act).  While, the navigation program on the Mississippi has also produced great benefits, today people understand that you need to pay some now to avoid much greater costs in the future.[/quote]Again, you leave out the greater environmental effect on the river, that of flood control projects, and try to blame those unintended consequences on navigation projects.  As I stated before, most of the river below Cairo has a natural depth beyond 9 feet, and dredging is done at certain points to make the depth consistent for navigation.  These perfunctory dredging projects had no effect on the problems you mention.  It was the desire for flood control by riverside interests that led to the unnatural raising of levees, which in turn raised the elevation of the river, which in turn forced leveels to be raised even higher, etc.  Turns out, flooding is a cyclical event, one that naturally rehabbed farmland by depositing those rich soils, and when they started "leveeing" everywhere, that natural cycle was shut down.  Too bad no one had figured out to leave the farmlands as is but put the farmhouse and barn on higher ground.That's one area where we probaby agree the USACE and riverside interests screwed up.  I have little sympathy for folks who build there houses and communities on natural flood plains.  But please, try to keep the two projects seperate when analyzing such effects, e.g. dredging for navigation is different from flood control projects - unless you're applying for a job at the AAR?[;)]
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