Going a bit down for the important-starting-quote, but go read more, please.
A little background: In the 1950s, a bureaucratic turf war developed over water control west of the Ohio River Basin. The Bureau of Reclamation and Army Corps of Engineers both wanted access to dam sites and rivers in the Midwest and West. Congress ordered them to come to an agreement. To paraphrase a whole lot of books and a rather cynical professor, each group dropped one dam, merged their wish-lists, and created the Pick-Sloan Plan. Congress blessed it into existence. The Army Corps was in charge of most of the Missouri River proper, and the Bureau got irrigation dams and projects. The job of the Army Corps was navigation and flood control, in that order, with everything else a distant third. And so it remained for decades. Then environmental protection and remediation became the first priority for the Corps on the Missouri.
via Environment or Army Corps of Engineers: The Floods of 2019 — Cat Rotator’s Quarterly
This fits with what I’ve seen in every state I’ve gotten nosy in– the water storage/control is decades behind realistic demand, where it hasn’t been destroyed for what amounts to virtue signaling.
This year should have been the “refill all the artificial lakes” year, which would also help recharge the ground water. (This could also be done with city rain water management, maybe waste water too– I’d love it if they separated out drinking water and had some “just a bit pool of water” options. I’m picturing things like this:
It’s a flash-flood/road water control pit in El Paso, Texas. The little box center-bottom is a business. Golf driving range. Closed when raining. ^.^ (Yes, that is why I remembered it, plus it’s near the Habitat Re-Store.
But we don’t have that.
Instead, it’s a nasty flood.
Then we go back to not having enough water.
