Blue Mass Group

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Thinking Big During Big Disasters…

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  1. The Globe a couple days ago did a great story on some of the unexpected consequences of the recent 50 year flood  (who came up with that phrase?) on the spring flora and fauna.  

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    p>And of course now cities and towns have to deal with the unfunded consequences of cleaning up a big mess.

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    “The storm’s impact will vary from community to community, but it has placed enormous stress on local governments,” said Geoffrey Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association.

    State and local officials will have to inspect dams that are already in dangerous condition. The state Department of Environmental Protection will look at sewage contamination to private and public wells, a spokesman said.

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    p>At least the frogs are happy.  

    • Means a flood of the size one would expect once every fifty years.  Of course this is purely a statistical measure and therefore not particularly useful.  The term refers to river floods, so while this might have been the a 50 year flood on some rivers, the Pawtuxet River in Rhode Island was closer to a 500 year flood.

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      p>Most measures of year floods are no longer reliable though, because of changes to the watershed due to human activity, such as increasing paved area and changing river courses.   A rain event that would have caused a 50 year flood in an undisturbed watershed, will now cause a flood of significantly greater magnitude.

  2. They were called wetlands. Nobody could figure out how to make money on ’em, so we paved them.

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      • The water’s gotta go somewhere.

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        p>Wisely someone stopped the Corps of Engineers from damming (damning?) the Charles here to make a permanent lake. It’s still a wetland. Every Spring it turns into a lake for a couple of weeks. This year it closed the bridge (which shouldn’t be where it is anyway, but that’s just me) for a few days.

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        p>Now that water will slowly seep into the ground or slowly flow on downhill. The wetland did its job, saving our downstream friends from worse floods.  

    • A big reason why there have been more large floods recently than in past decades is we’ve greatly increased the amount of paved land in our watersheds. When land is paved, water runs very quickly into lakes and streams rather than being absorbed by the ground and filling them more slowly. This causes larger quicker floods.

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      p>Another thing that’s been done more in other parts of the country is the channelization of rivers, which ironically is often done in name of flood control. A naturally meandering river has more capacity to store water than one that has been artificially straightened.

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      p>Lastly, people build too closely to rivers, often in their flood plains. The best flood preparation is not to build in areas that are prone to flooding to begin with.

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      p>(I originally posted this on boston.com during the floods)

  3. Welsbach seeding and S 517 plus the two versions of the Space Preservation Act by Dennis Kucinich all indicate the unspoken subject of geo-engineering.  In our very short, only 100 years of rapidly advancing technology how many times have we made a wrong choice as stewards of the enviornment.  

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    p>The 911 first responders who were abandoned by the government clearly show the true color of government.

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