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“FARMING is always a gamble, you know,” the farmer’s wife said, just last week. Her husband was out in the fields, haying, and it looked like a thundershower was blowing up.
It may sound trite to remind readers in a rural area that farming is, indeed, a gamble, but some of the testimony heard at a recent “flood control” project hearing makes you wonder. Maybe some people need some reminding.
“Flood control,” from what we’ve seen of such proposals, is little more than a process of transferring the flooding from one part of the stream,to another. If it’s done right—if “right” is the apt word for this situation—the flooding is transferred to a place where it won’t do any harm, where it won’t inundate buildings or wash away bridges. But the point to remember is that the flooding isn’t really “controlled”; not even King Canute could command the tides. It’s merely transferred.
Thus, in Prince William County, there have been elaborate proposals to transfer flooding to upstream farmland to save some subdivision houses that were unwisely built in flood plain downstream. Likewise, in Arlington, there have been multi-billion dollar “control” schemes put forward which are designed to save the investment of businesses which were unwisely established in flood-prone areas. In both instances, it would probably be cheaper, and more certain, to
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