The Bible is clear that God created nature for man. But this country is controlled by those who believe they are above God and nature is above man. So instead of the hierarchy being God-Man-Nature, for the pantheists the hierarchy is Nature-Man-Maybe God. Here is the result:
But after about thirty years of operation, as the environmentalist movement gained strength throughout the seventies and eighties, the Corps received a great deal of pressure to include some specific environmental concerns into their MWCM (Master Water Control Manual, the "bible" for the operation of the dam system). Preservation of habitat for at-risk bird and fish populations soon became a hot issue among the burgeoning environmental lobby. The pressure to satisfy the demands of these groups grew exponentially as politicians eagerly traded their common sense for "green" political support.
Things turned absurd from there. An ideato restore the nation's rivers to a natural (pre-dam) state swept through the environmental movement and their allies. Adherents enlisted the aid of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), asking for an updated "Biological Opinion" from the FWS that would make ecosystem restoration an "authorized purpose" of the dam system. The Clinton administration threw its support behind the change, officially shifting the priorities of the Missouri River dam system from flood control, facilitation of commercial traffic, and recreation to habitat restoration, wetlands preservation, and culturally sensitive and sustainable biodiversity.
Congress created a committee to advise the Corps on how best to balance these competing priorities. The Missouri River Recovery and Implementation Committee has seventy members. Only four represent interests other than environmentalism. The http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/06/the_purposeful_flooding_of_americas_heartland.htmlrecommendations of the committee, as one might expect, have been somewhat less than evenhanded.
The Corps began to utilize the dam system to mimic the previous flow cycles of the original river, holding back large amounts of water upstream during the winter and early spring in order to release them rapidly as a "spring pulse." The water flows would then be restricted to facilitate a summer drawdown of stream levels. This new policy was highly disruptive to barge traffic and caused frequent localized flooding, but a multi-year drought masked the full impact of the dangerous risks the Corps was taking.
This year, despite more than double the usual amount of mountain and high plains snowpack (and the ever-present risk of strong spring storms), the true believers in the Corps have persisted in following the revised MWCM, recklessly endangering millions of residents downstream.
Missouri Senator Roy Blunt agrees, calling the management plan "flawed" and "poorly thought out." Sen. Blunt characterized the current flooding as "entirely preventable" and told reporters that he intends to force changes to the plan.
Perhaps tellingly, not everyone feels the same apprehension toward the imminent disaster.
Greg Pavelka, a wildlife biologist with the Corps of Engineers in Yankton, SD, told the Seattle Times that this event will leave the river in a "much more natural state than it has seen in decades," describing the epic flooding as a "prolonged headache for small towns and farmers along its path, but a boon for endangered species." He went on to say, "The former function of the river is being restored in this one-year event. In the short term, it could be detrimental, but in the long term it could be very beneficial."
And Pavelka is not alone. Senator Mike Vehle also celebrates man being destroyed by flooding. It provided him an excuse to raise our taxes. From the web siteof the international organization whose purpose is to destroy state sovereignty and implement the one-world government:
One of the lawmakers featured in the brief is South Dakota State Sen. Mike Vehle, who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee in Pierre and who is a member of CSG’s Transportation Policy Task Force. While Vehle was unsuccessful in his effort to raise his state’s 22 cent-a-gallon tax by 6 cents over two years, the legislature did approve an increase in license tag fees that will help fund maintenance of county, township and municipal roads and bridges.
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Vehle describes the confluence of events that allowed the measure to succeed even over the Governor’s veto as a “perfect storm.” One significant factor was the condition of the state’s infrastructure.
“For about four years, myself and a few others have been talking about the need to fix our roads,” Vehle said. “County and township roads are in mostly fair to poor condition and local officials were getting more and more vocal on the need for assistance for their roads. We’ve had several wet years and township and county roads were taking a real beating. Heavier farm equipment and grain loads were taking their toll. Instead of some paved roads being repaired or resurfaced, some were being ground back to gravel and gravel roads were returning to dirt.”
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Vehle said throughout the winter as the measure was considered in committee and on the floor of the House and Senate, the snow falling outside provided a constant reminder.
“Everyone knows when all this snow melts it’s going to make those local roads even worse,” he said.
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Vehle summed up what it took to get the bill done this way: “Especially in these times, if you want to increase funding, you must establish a real and recognizable need, get solid grassroots support, and then get lucky and have a perfect storm.”
Yes, Senator Mike Vehle loves big government and could care less about the suffering of people in South Dakota. Vehle is with those who could care less about those being flooded out of their homes...as long as it feeds their big government agenda. Vehle's main concern regarding the flooding is that it may lower property assessed valuations and property tax revenues. Yes, he said that!
And this is for the Cory Heidelbergers of the world:
In recent decades, many universities have steeped their Natural Sciences curriculum in the green tea of earth-activism, producing radically eco-centric graduates who naturally seek positions with the government agencies where they can best implement their theories. Today, many of these men and women have risen high in their fields, hiring fellow travelers to fill subordinate positions and creating a powerful echo chamber of radical environmentalist theory.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is a victim/tool of the above-described process. The horrifying consequence is water rushing from the dams on the Missouri twice as fast as the highest previous releases on record. Floodgates that have not been opened in more than fifty years are in full operation, discharging water at a rate of 150,000 cubic feet per second toward millions of Americans downstream.
This is a mind-boggling rate of release. Consider that 150,000 cubic feet of water would fill a football field instantly to a depth of four feet. This amount of water, being released every second, will continue unabated for the next several months. The levees that protect the cities and towns downstream were constructed to handle the flow rates promised at the time of the dam's construction. None of these levees have ever been tested at these levels, yet they must hold back millions of acre-feet of floodwater for the entire summer without failing. In the flooding of 1993, more than a thousand levees failed. This year's event will be many orders of magnitude greater.
There are many well-publicized examples of absurd obeisance to the demands of radical environmentalists resulting in great economic harm. The Great Missouri River Flood of 2011 is shaping up to be another -- only this time, the price will likely be paid in lives lost as well as treasure. Ayn Rand said, "You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality."
We need to begin the investigations immediately. It seems that it is sanity, and not the river, that needs to be restored.
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