Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks | Hacker News Reader

Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

gcaptain.com

127 pointstomohawk103 comments

If you ever have a friend or family member who is trying to get around wetland conservation laws, they are contributing to the shrinking of our river systems.

Water retention capacity in upper watersheds directly contribute to average river flow, which is very easy to show by the behavior of streams. Deserts are self-reinforcing systems where the heat pushes clouds up or away from them. Wet, cool forests draw in more precipitation in. We don't really understand the processes yet, but we do know it's not a zero sum game of delaying (or 'stealing') water versus total system flow. This is most easily demonstrated for watersheds on the windward sides of mountains, due to snow pack, but forests and microbes both fiddle around with cloud cover in general.

As for restoring watersheds, we systematically removed the engineers that created the lush river systems of the US and Canada, namely the beaver, which once numbered at somewhere between 60 and 300 million animals in North America. We blame long term changes in rain patterns for the reduced river flow, but I strongly suspect that is the '3 Whys' trap of the Five Whys Process.

Not only affecting the shrinking of the river systems, but also degrading the quality of the water.

I live in Iowa, home of 3.15 million people and 24 million pigs. Tile in the fields and a complete lack of buffer between fields and streams sends massive amounts of fertilizer into the waterways and ultimately down the Mississippi. ~85% of the land in the state is dedicated to farming in one way or another, and the amount of manure which can be spread per acre is based on crop production per acre formulas from the 1970's. Breeding work has increased corn yield by about 65%, allowing that much more manure to be spread.

I recently found this podcast which talks about water issues around the state, produced by University of Iowa professors.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-all-want-clean-h2o/...

>If you ever have a friend or family member who is trying to get around wetland conservation laws, they are contributing to the shrinking of our river systems.

If you ever read/hear a statement like this you can safely ignore it because nobody with any second or even third hand exposure to the true vastness of the scope of wetland conservation laws would say such a thing.

Somebody's little construction project to replace their 25x30 cabin on a lake in the woods with one that's 24x32 isn't material in this context no matter how hard people may dishonestly try to imply otherwise. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of cases of "skirting conservation laws" are cases of people who want to do a nearly like for like replacement of some existing thing that didn't need permission when it was done 40-140yr ago and don't want to pay some guy with a license thousands of dollars for the privilege of a stamped drawing.

You say that like nobody of Hacker News knows anybody who is a land developer.

> some existing thing that didn't need permission when it was done 40-140yr ago

Not every law ever written has grandfather clauses, and where water rights are concerned we are quickly running out of patience for grandfather clauses.

> no matter how hard people may dishonestly try to imply otherwise

Hey you know what else is dishonest? Making a big conversation with wide ranging consequences have to pause to talk about one particular line item you have a problem with. Agenda or no (which you are projecting on others), the results are the same.

Every city is worsening its watershed - through development - except for the few that are actively fighting against it. And so many families are getting burned out by wildfires because we keep increasing the density of cabins out in the woods. It's not isolated incidents when you have 5 million or even half a million people living in a county all trying to do their own thing without The Man trying to stop them.

No single rain drop believes it is responsible for the flood.

> we are quickly running out of patience for grandfather clauses.

Who is "we"? Who put you in charge of speaking for everyone?

Start at the south end of the Colorado for the loudest voices, and then work your way north. So that's the entire country of Mexico who wonders where their river went, and the people upstream who are progressively less effected by the reduced flow.

Then add in environmentalists and conservationists. You can't preserve wetland plants and animals when there's no wetland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Delta

> The loss of freshwater flows to the delta over the twentieth century has reduced delta wetlands to about 5 percent of their original extent, and non-native species have compromised the ecological health of much of what remains. Stress on ecosystems has allowed invasive plants to out-compete native species along Colorado River riparian areas. Native forests of cottonwood and willow have yielded to sand and mudflats dominated by the nonnative tamarisk (also known as salt cedar), arrow-weed, and iodine bush, a transformation that has decreased the habitat value of the riparian forest.[7]

> So that's the entire country of Mexico who wonders where their river went

Why is it "their river" more than, say, Colorado's river?

And, once again, who put you in charge of speaking for them?

We did when we failed to marginalize such dolts decades ago.

It's painful how widespread this notion of 'nature steals precious water' is, and how quickly the practical implications of such a mindset leads to further destruction.

The municipality where I live have an annual cycle of doing things like:

  * Scraping away every fallen leaf to be burned
  * Removing all twigs, branches and dead wood
  * Burning or spraying down all weeds
  * Cutting the grass, even in places no one walks
  * Aggressively cutting down bushes

Every year the soil gets drier, compacts and washes away when rainfall comes in the spring and turns our parks into giant mudslides.

Next year they spend hundreds of thousands trying to replant and reseed, only to lose it again in the words of 'maintenance'.

Meanwhile, our smaller community decided to do the complete opposite:

  * Faux-compost everything (grass cuttings, leaves, twigs, weeds) by literally just throwing it into a pile and forgetting about it
  * Mulch everything with said compost
  * Let (non-invasive) weeds take over areas that were previously barren
  * Not trim down bushes before winter

In nearly two seasons now, we've gone from watching a slow depressing death of what used to be a wonderful garden before the droughts started in ~2018, to a garden that is even more impressive and seems to grow stronger every year. We now have more birds than ever, as insects have started to bounce back.

We're doing 1/10th of the work as our neighboring communities, and we're getting as good if not better results.

I wish more people approached gardening/landscaping with this water-harvesting, nature mimicking way. It's cheap, takes extremely little resources and demonstrates how incredibly strong an ecosystem can be if you just work with it rather than against it, even on a small scale.

The absolute amount of effort we spend fighting nature instead of just guiding and living with it is frightening.

Illusion of Control. We need group therapy and nobody who has successfully accomplished that at such scales has any formal training in the subject.

If you don't manage it (fight it) you get the buried and re-discovered pyramids of southern Mexico (and Cambodia). Yes, there is a balance, however, the other extreme is also not viable for habitation.

Yea but we're so far on the extreme of slash and burn and pouring chemicals on lawns that it's not even worth considering at this point concerns of habitation. It's just not even on the radar in terms of things that we need to bother caring about for the foreseeable future (100+ years minimum).

I agree that we can find better solutions than what lawns provide, however, weeds, nature and plants will take over an unmanaged property pretty quickly... maybe 20 years. In 100 places are near unrecognizable. The abandoned areas of Detroit did not take 100 years to become overtaken by nature. And that's a continental climate. In Tropical climates the rate will be quicker.

Sure, but in the context of this discussion unmanaged property simply isn't an issue, in my view. It's too much management that's causing problems.

OP is thinking of protecting property value

Pouring chemicals? Maybe a few do but I only apply one application of pre-emergent a year and then one application of fertilizer in the fall. That's not really pouring chemicals. In fact nature seems to thrive in our lawn.

From my time in the suburbs, people spray weed killer and similar chemicals throughout the spring and summer and into the fall. Of course each individual is different. We never sprayed and just let them grow and mowed them down and then pulled them out of flower beds.

You can also verify that these are used extensively by looking at the number of products sold for this purpose at national hardware retailers.

But this is just one issue among many. Lawns are de facto desert areas.

There are so many products because people are ignorant and just want an easy fix. It's pure laziness and has nothing to do with having a healthy lawn. There's a lot of money in laziness :)

A healthy lawn really doesn't require that much from a chemical standpoint, but it take effort to figure out what it needs and you have to do things at the right time. In fact, the healthier the lawn the less weed killers you need because a thick lawn is a poor environment for weeds.

Lots of people blanket apply fertilizers too. But in reality a quick test of the soil can tell you exactly what is out of balance and if you need that fertilizer application at all.

I definitely agree with you there, but even a healthy lawn is still a lawn, which is still a bit of a problem. Outside of insects in the ground not much can live there. You need a variety of bushes, trees, herbs, flowers, and other types of plants to create a healthy ecosystem there. A lawn simply can't provide that.

that’s the historical point of a lawn. no one wants pests near their home.

Yea but now we can see the ecological impact of tens (hundreds?) of millions of people doing that and it doesn’t work.

Those few though in total mean your city is pouring more chemicals on per unit area that farmers who "pour chemical" on every acre. Of course farmers are talking about thousands of acres and so chemical prices add up, while the individual is only talking about 1/10th an acre or less, so the costs add up a lot slower. Thus the farmer has incentive to put on only what is needed, and not let it run away. (not that farmers do a good job here, but they are aware of the problem unlike city residents)

You would be astounded if you looked more deeply in to this. I have tried in vain to get my landlord to stop paying a lawncare company to regularly (every month or two) dousing the patchy, dry, awful grass patches some call a lawn with fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides.

There is a huge business around doing this as well, you may not see it if you don't walk suburbs during working hours when much of this is done.

Oh no I believe it and I am against those practices very much! But I feel like lawns are demonized when they don't need to be if properly done. There are a lot of benefits to lawns that are just being flat out ignored in a large part of these comment sections.

I think the reason for this is as follows, if you'll allow:

Let's pretend that wine is good for cardiovascular health (there were some conflicting studies so it's truthy enough I think for this point).

We're having a discussion and we have a mutual friend who is a raging alcoholic. They drink and drive every night, they get blacked out completely, they can't hold a job. Myself and a few others are like hey friend, you need to go to AA, you need to get help, you need to see a doctor. We find them at bars and take their keys. We tell bartenders to stop serving them. They go to liquor stores and just cannot stop.

And you're like, well ya know wine does have some cardiovascular benefits. And it's a great social lubricant.

Now of course you aren't really dismissing the problem here, which is that our mutual friend is a raging alcoholic. We all can see that undeniably. But you're also not really helping because you're espousing these health benefits but we're trying to keep someone from killing themselves or others. We're working on a gigantic problem with this person and these health benefits just do not enter into the picture at this point.

This maps back to suburban America (and elsewhere) where yea there are well taken care of lawns and sure a few people can have them. But our suburban friend here is a raging alcoholic and no amount of lawn is really good for them regardless of the benefits it may have.

Manage and fight are vastly different - we're getting better at this (example: freeways used to have water runoff go to the storm sewers and now they go into dry holding ponds instead).

I spent some time as a volunteer sandbagging one of the levees in Missouri as high water neared flood stage. While there, I heard a quote attributed to an old-time farmer who was also the president of the Upper Mississippi Valley Drainage Association who also appeared before Congress on damages caused by varying the water level. The quote was along the lines of: "We think we can drain water from certain areas and farm the land next to the river, but that land belongs to the Mississippi. It can take it back any time it wants to."

The eventual disaster at the old river control will show us that someday. Hopefully not soon.

You should go live in a third world village for a few years and then come back here and say that. Life in “nature” sucks. The kids in my dad’s village don’t have to take a boat to school during monsoon season, like he has to do growing up, because they “fought nature” to control flooding.

All the more desperate considering that 1/10th of the work may be regarded by many as "not good for the economy".

We should take those people and make them dig holes in the ground, and then fill them up again. Plenty of work, great for the economy.

Did you just invent an imaginary group of baddies, assign them an imaginary belief, and then feel concerned because they "exist"?

Not that we, or rather I, mowed our lawn often, at most ince every 3-4 weeks or so. This year, we decided to leave part of it to grow. The amount of insects in there was astounishing, so the patch stayed uncut between June and two weeks ago. The rain transfromed it ibto something less than pretty. Turned out the grass underneath is prettier than before. Next we gonna repeat the same thing with a different patch.

Did this for No-Mow-May. Left some patches unmowed for that month (we got a lot of rain in May this year). Lots of diversity in those patches. It was kind of hard to mow them in June - had to use the weed-eater first. Left a couple of the patches longer into July. Neighbor across the street almost came unhinged. Tried to explain that it was helping polinators... but it was a waste of breath.

Lucky us we don't have of those neighbors, and basically cannot get them. No HOAs or similar shenenigans were we live, even the city leaves large patches in parks unmowed until automn in some places.

Here's a fun bit of chemistry I learned some time ago: the breakdown of cellulose and lignin produces water as one of the byproducts. Which stands to reason since photosynthesis consumes a good deal of water in the first place.

Those saprophytic fungi, which enjoy a nice wet environment to work in, are producing some of the water they need to work. When you burn this material instead, you send all of that humidity up the chimney with the rest of the gasses (and a little extra from the surroundings due to evaporation from the heat).

Because I'm extremely lazy, that's what I do with my yard. I let the native plants do what they want, just cutting down the invasive ones.

It's been (slowly) turning into a lovely yard, lots of wildflowers, bees, and critters. No need to ever water it, either.

A book that talks about this at a different level is One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka that follows the idea of Do Nothing Farming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_farming

We need a state of climate emergency to just ban some needlessly destructive practices, ideally globally. Mowing lawns is something we can just decide not to do. Meat and dairy we can just decide not to do.

> …I strongly suspect that is the '3 Whys' trap of the Five Whys Process.

My search-fu fails me. What is this?

I'm guessing it means "stop asking why before discovering the root cause". I.e. the analysis stops at a symptom rather than the cause.

What routerl said. Skipping out on root cause analysis by stopping as soon as you find something actionable. Those shallow analyses often result in a much bigger cleanup project that is also much less effective. Great for empire building, not so great for progress.

It just so happens that I usually catch people at this when they only have 3 Whys mapped out. There's something going on there but I'm not sure I understand the mechanics.

Gotcha, thanks! AFAICT you coined "3 Whys trap", which is a great name for it.

I really appreciated this! I've heard of the five whys earlier in life, and later on I've heard of 'the 3 whys', part of the selling technique that everyone has to answer:

- Why buy anything? - Why buy from you? - Why buy now?

I knew it wasn't that, and the idea of the 5 Whys funnel crapping out at 3 Whys does make sense!

pretty popular for root cause analysis technique at AWS. They published an article on it here https://wa.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/2020-07-02T19-33-2....

Thanks, I'm a fan of "5 Whys" but had never heard of the "3 Whys trap".

Your post reminds me of this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSctr0aQOso

There's a group working in the Columbia River basin, and they've seen good results both from just setting beavers loose. They've seen positive but lesser results from man-made bespoke beaver dams, but of note is that in some cases the beavers adopted a man-made dam and completed it, which may help smooth the path for reintroduction in places where Illusion of Control sufferers paint beavers as anarchists. We would prefer the beaver dams be here, here and here, so we will try to coax them into doing just that.

Part of my statements above come from their work, and if memory serves, they made an off-hand comment in one of their reports about wanting to try the same thing in the Colorado. The Columbia is in good enough shape that we've removed dams to restore salmon spawning grounds. The Colorado is a fucking mess, but it's not in 'hippy dippy' states where funding is easier to come by.

And the Supreme Court will probably gut those laws in the near future.

How would wetlands conservation laws not be constitutional?

Takings and violation of property rights

Environmental conservation laws should be considered a matter of national security. We need to mobilize the military industrial complex on the side of the environment before everything dies.

Ah yes, “we need to bend the procedures for the stuff I think is important.”

I think they're just advocating for more conservation laws, right? That is the procedures, not a bending of them.

Invocation of “national security” generally implies some sort of bending or exceptions to the ordinary rules. “We can’t reveal those documents because of national security.” “We need to indefinitely detain those terrorists because of national security.”

Because Congress hasn’t passed comprehensive wetland conservation laws. The executive branch has invoked authority under the Clean Water Act, which applies to “navigable waters” which in turn is defined as “waters of the United States.” https://www.epa.gov/wotus/about-waters-united-states

A marsh on your farm that isn’t connected to a navigable body of water is outside the reach of the CWA.

If you ever have a chance, I highly recommend going near a port and watching operations.

I used to live near the Mississippi River in Iowa, and it was always impressive to see the barge traffic and think about the sheer volume of product moving. South of St. Louis, the barge tows can be up to 45 barges.

Visiting Savanah, Georgia and watching the ships come and go was also impressive. There's a bridge that was built in 1953, replaced in 1991, and is in consideration for replacement again because the ships keep getting larger.

I'll also recommend the Containers podcast, an 8 part series discussing global trade and why the ships keep getting bigger.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/containers/id120955917...

The most impressive of the Panama Canal related expansion works was the project by PANYNJ in New York to raise the roadway of an existing arch bridge from within, and without interrupting traffic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayonne_Bridge

This kind of gives the lie to the "The US can't build anything anymore" - we do build things but we have all sorts of restrictions we wouldn't have operated under a hundred years ago.

Back then we would have just built a whole new bridge somewhere nearby and then probably detonated the old one.

Nobody says that the US literally cant build anything anymore. The sentiment, backed by data, is that it is vastly more expensive and slower to build than in the past. This makes it hard to justify attempting a project at all.

This analysis [1] shows that building tunnels in the US costs 10X more than in Norway, and 3X the average for the countries studied. Obviously, this means that with the same government budget, you get 10% the infrastructure than a country like Norway. However, this also means the return on investment needs to be 10X higher to justify starting the project at all!

This trend holds true for most types of building projects in the US.

https://projectdelivery.enotrans.org/international/

Just to make it worse, often the things we are talking about are areas where network effects matter so the more you build the better the return on investment. Or in our case because we can afford to build so little our return on investment will be much less than it could be if we build more.

Most of the reports I've seen site a few factors:

Availability of cheap skilled labor. Europe often sources it's cheap engineers and Trades workers from the East.

Inefficient regulatory Frameworks such as mandated workers to do nothing and an onerous environmental monitoring.

Political dysfunction and gridlock. Projects are often poorly conceived and continually change their design and intent over the course of a project.

Some of these might be considered Network effects I guess. If you don't build infrastructure, you don't have a healthy market for workers and companies with expertise

Remember that US prices include health insurance, I’m not sure the EU ones do (for state-provided healthcare). I’m not sure how the account labor costs.

I don't think that's true. I think the costs are top line, before corporate and individual taxes, which would include any cost which go to socialized medicine in Europe.

As a separate question, I don't know that the European socialized Healthcare Services are paying for the migrant workers from Eastern countries that perform the work

I live in New Orleans along the river - some of the largest ships I’ve seen are branded with “Chiquita” and “Dole”. It’s hilariously fascinating to watch literal tons of bananas gently float by.

If you want an additional layer of humor, read The Fish that Ate the Whale. I believe there is still a 'United Fruit' building somewhere in New Orleans.

Related I also gotta recommend "Uncommon Carriers" by John McPhee. It's got a chapter that follows a barge operator on the Illinois river that's pretty great.

Current level: 10.52 ft. forecast has it at 7ft by end of October.

Record lows:

Low Water Records for Ohio River at Cairo

(1) -1.00 ft on 12/24/1871

(2) 0.30 ft on 12/30/1876

(3) 1.10 ft on 01/01/1877

(4) 2.00 ft on 12/31/1887

(5) 2.50 ft on 10/20/1897

(6) 2.90 ft on 11/21/1901

(7) 4.93 ft on 07/12/1988

(8) 5.80 ft on 12/31/1963

(9) 6.87 ft on 08/28/2006

(10) 7.10 ft on 01/17/1981

(11) 7.15 ft on 08/29/2012

(12) 7.20 ft on 08/08/2005

(13) 8.52 ft on 09/11/2000

(14) 8.72 ft on 09/19/2005

(15) 8.72 ft on 07/25/2012

(16) 9.10 ft on 02/12/2000

(17) 11.33 ft on 06/30/2012

(18) 11.63 ft on 10/16/2006

(19) 13.10 ft on 05/19/2000

https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/water.php?wfo=pah&gage=ciri2

Since I wondered how a river can have a negative depth:

> A river's stage at a point (a gauge reading) is not an absolute measure of the depth of the water in the channel, rather it is a depth with respect to an historical Datum level. In summary, when a river gauge reads zero or in the negative numbers - it does not mean that the river has gone totally dry or is running below ground. It means that the gauge is reading at or below the agreed-upon zero level.

> Silt may deposit in the river channel over time (filling the channel up), or the channel bottom may be scoured out to a deeper level by strong currents.

> Still, the gauge zero datum levels are not changed to keep continuity.

https://www.weather.gov/ctp/NegativeRiverStages

So, these aren't depth, and apparently aren't even comparable.

And depending on sediment transport dynamics for a particular reach of the river, the depth could be higher or lower at a given stage (i.e., height above datum) today than at the same stage in the past.

This article has no details on causes. Minnesota has had a dry summer, and the driest September on record. Most streams/rivers in central/south MN are low. https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/river_levels/index.html

The flow of the Mississippi after leaving Minnesota is no where near the lowest recorded: https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=arx&gage=...

Low Water Records for Mississippi River at Lansing

(1) 3.39 ft on 03/13/1938

(2) 4.19 ft on 01/23/1944

(3) 6.09 ft on 11/27/1942

(4) 6.34 ft on 02/04/1943

(5) 6.58 ft on 01/17/1945

(6) 6.76 ft on 08/14/1941

(7) 6.92 ft on 10/28/1940

(8) 6.94 ft on 01/27/1957

Currently at 8ft.

Typo?

Should that read "is now where", "is not where", or ... ?

It should have been nowhere.

Thanks.

However, this is talking about river levels at Cairo, Illinois (pronounced "Cay-Roe", BTW) which is on the Ohio River right before it dumps into the Mississippi.

The Ohio provides the majority of the water in the lower Mississippi, so it is definitely concerning.

Hmm, the St Croix is low but not lower than historical lows from years past: https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?gage=stlm5&wf...

(The St Croix is 1% of the total discharge of the Mississippi.)

It annoys me to no end (in a tiny way) that there are two St Croix rivers along borders in the US.

Am in New Orleans and folks are talking about an in-river levee to keep the salt water from intruding into the river from the Gulf of Mexico, because of the low river levels.

I know there are water restrictions in most of the USA but I never thought it would hit the Mississippi river.

How can the article not mention that it ebbs and flows? They're making it alarmist sounding when it's just the natural state of the river.

Probably trying to drum up support for getting money from Congress for dredging key sections.

Thirsty? light a fire, then people come with water.

Complex systems tend to fishtail when they're about to collapse. Peak output can go up while averages are declining.

This isnt excessively outside the deviation, see the quantitative. comment in this thread.

For anyone curious about water levels around their region, the US Geological Service monitors water levels in real time across thousands of stations. I had a great discussion with a couple USGS data scientists at the RStudio conference in July.

Their remote monitoring stations report the data to their servers typically in 15 minute intervals.

If you're worried about the water level at a particular location, they have a service which allows you to get alerts if it exceeds a certain level. They're in the middle of redoing many of their online tools, so it's a mix of legacy and modern looking web development.

They get their funding from contracts with other federal agencies or private businesses, not directly from the government. For example, a company may have a permit that they can pull 100,000 cubic feet of water from a stream per day, but that the stream level must not go below 5 feet. USGS would add monitoring after the draw point and provide that data to the client (and public) at the client's expense.

https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/rt

Also if you're interested in the flood level of a river near you, put the alerts on the areas upstream as you can often get advance warning.

That's a great site. I usually start from water.weather.gov but I don't remember why. It's cool how much data U.S. governments collect. You can get everything from water flow and depth to the price and quality of wholesale lettuce.

Tidbit from your water gage link: parts of central Florida are still under record-high floods, days after the hurricane. https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/02296750/#par...

Water levels along waterways (such as the one you linked) will continue to rise maybe another week+ as water drains into the waterways. It takes time for "high" lands to drain their water, and all that water drains into waterways (such as the one you linked). iirc, after Irma a few years ago, it took almost 2 weeks for waterways to begin receding to normal levels.

In the meantime, the drainage basin on the other (Agassiz) side of the continental divide from the Mississippi headwaters has been experiencing very high levels. (Following long-term flooding this spring.) Manitoba reports:

"Inflows were the highest-ever recorded and due to exceptional precipitation across southern Manitoba and Northwest Ontario this spring, especially in the Winnipeg River and Red River watersheds." - https://www.hydro.mb.ca/corporate/facilities/water_levels/

FWIW, historically, the lands up there haven't been 'improved' very much.

It will be interesting to see how food waste statistics are influenced by these supply chain and inflation woes, as well as our interest in mono-cropping soy and corn.

Wasn't it just flooding?

Reduction in system capacity simultaneously decreases average throughput and decreases the ability to handle peak throughput.

Send this article to the desertSun.com

Reply on news.ycombinator.com