Rising up with the water – Editorial

If we’ve learned anything from the natural disasters that have slammed our state in recent years, it is that for all of our lack of preparation, Louisianans will pull together—and eventually bounce back.

As of this writing, an historic bulge of Mississippi River water is swelling toward us, sure to flood every low-lying community that’s ever been flooded by that grand old river, plus others that have never flooded before.

Just as after Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Gustav, the Baton Rouge community will be called on to step up and provide shelter and support for families in crisis. And just as before, Baton Rougeans will generously give time and money to help flood victims, some of whom may be very near.

At times like this, when Mother Nature gathers and exerts herself, we realize how utterly inadequate are man’s efforts to corral and control something as mighty as the Mississippi River. That river wants to wiggle and sway to and fro the way a garden hose does when it’s unattended. It’s only in recent history that we decided cities like New Orleans and Baton Rouge were important enough to keep dry year-round, and we hemmed in the river with levees, control structures and spillway locks.

Complacently, we rely on mere earthen levees to hold back one of this planet’s most powerful rivers. For decades, we raced to build entire communities in former flood plains. Today, we are re-assessing the cost of those decisions.

Why? Because of Catch-22 choices we must make. Like opening the Morganza Spillway for the first time since 1973—and flooding low-lying Atchafalaya communities—in order to keep the river from spilling over the levees in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

Too many Louisianans think of ours as a “something for nothing” state. It’s a populist impulse that has eaten away like a cancer at everything from politics to our education system.

But we know nothing comes free, and so as a state and a nation, we have to re-invest in and adapt our critical infrastructure and work to make choices about where and how we live that are in the best interests of our whole community, state and country.