The Midwest has been underwater for the past week, and it is only expected to get worse as the spring rains continue and the snow melts. The damage caused has been some of the worst yet due to the levees breaking, causing breaches everywhere.
The levees are so full of holes that they are being referred to as “swiss cheese,” which only demonstrates the severity of the infrastructure failure. More than 60 levees were breached or overtopped in the Midwest in March, and hundreds of miles of levees were damaged.
The levees have aged, are subject to muddled regulations and were not designed to handle the amount of river water that has risen in the last decade.
One big problem is how poorly the infrastructure has been kept up. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the country’s levee system a D grade in 2017 and suggested $80 billion in investment over the next 10 years.
The infrastructure in our country requires immediate attention and fixing because issues like this levee crisis were preventable had they been fixed in the way that was recommended. And fixing the infrastructure may only be a band-aid if we do not address the perilous environmental situation that has been created in part by climate change.
Due to the warmer atmosphere created by global warming, there is more precipitation being held in the air, which, therefore, causes wetter rainstorms. This is contributing to the intense flooding that has only gotten worse this past decade.
We can try and fix the levees as much as we want, and that should be something the government focuses on as people continue to file for bankruptcy. But if we do not accept that global warming is a contributing factor and start taking drastic measures, then fixing the levees will mean nothing.
The country will only be wasting money on fixing infrastructure if the threat of climate change is not properly addressed and dealt with. With the way this administration has been handling the floods, I do not see it being dealt with any time soon.
Another consequence of the floods is the Native Americans who have suffered the most during these floods have not been receiving nearly enough attention nor help. Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota has been nearly cut off from the outside world due to the dangerous flood waters.
The government should be sending much more help than they are because people are running out of food, and 8,000 residents ran out of water earlier last month.
While many people are being affected negatively by these floods, the Native Americans are not receiving the proper aid and emergency relief that the other people suffering are receiving. Many of the people on the Pine Ridge reservation live in poverty, and rates of teen suicide and alcoholism are high.
Everyone needs immediate help and relief equally, and beyond that, climate change must be acknowledged as one of the causes of this severe flooding in the Midwest. The government needs to make serious improvements to the infrastructure of this country, but they must also work toward reversing climate change at the same time.
