Challenge and response in the Mississippi River Basin
| Autor: | Laila Kasuri, William Niebling, Sarah E. Katz, Kim Smet, Jonathan Baker |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2014 |
| Předmět: |
Government
Engineering geography Economic growth geography.geographical_feature_category Scope (project management) Flood myth business.industry Geography Planning and Development Drainage basin Management Monitoring Policy and Law Flood control Politics business Restoration ecology Environmental planning Channel (geography) Water Science and Technology |
| Zdroj: | Water Policy. 16:87-116 |
| ISSN: | 1996-9759 1366-7017 |
| DOI: | 10.2166/wp.2014.005 |
| Popis: | This paper discusses the historic and contemporary challenges in the management of the lower Mississippi River Basin, and describes the evolving role of the federal government in addressing these challenges. In the early eighteenth century, the federal government was responsible for maintaining a navigable channel. After repeated calls by states for federal assistance with flood control and a devastating flood in 1927, the federal government additionally became the primary body responsible for protecting the Delta from floods. Although the resulting flood control system provided greater protection, it also brought new challenges, such as an increasingly large hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico, land subsidence in southern Louisiana and water quality issues. The confluence of these environmental concerns and changing national values have once again broadened the scope of federal responsibility to include environmental management and ecosystem restoration, along with its original involvement in navigation and flood control. This triad of responsibility carries with it often-competing objectives that must be balanced within legal and institutional constraints, most notably a deficit of available funding for inland waterway projects and what appears to be a lack of political will for continued investment in the maintenance of existing and development of new projects. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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