Restoration of 2011 flood-damaged Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway

Abstract

D uring the spring 2011 flooding along the Mississippi River, the strong current and sweep of water through the Birds Point, Missouri, levee breach in May of 2011 created a hundred hectares (hundreds of acres) of deep gullies; scoured hundreds of hectares (hundreds of acres) of land; eroded tons of soil; filled ditches with sediment which blocked drainage; created sand deltas; and damaged irrigation equipment, farm buildings, and homes. Reclamation and restoration of these agricultural lands following the US Army Corps of Engineers' (USACE) opening of the New Madrid Floodway to relieve flood pressure on the levee system from the Mississippi River (Camillo 2012; Olson and Morton 2012a, 2012b) has been time consuming and costly to individual landowners and public tax dollars. While levees were rebuilt, ditches cleared of sediment, and many lands in the floodway restored by November of 2012, soil productivity and growing conditions continue to challenge the farmers of this historically highly productive region. The USACE decision to blow up Birds Point levee along the Lower Mississippi River and flood agricultural lands in the New Madrid Floodway (Missouri) (figure 1) was difficult, with substantive legal challenges as well as social and political trade-offs between human life and property…