Gasconade River Record Levels At Jerome

[ColdWaterFshr]

Chesterfield valley development. Take a look at THAT short memory. I predict that sucker, no matter what the corp says with their new fangled 500 yr flood levies . . . they're building similiar levies all up and down the Missouri river flood funnel waterslide. . . and I predict it won't make it 20 years. I will laugh my butt off when that Polo Ralph Lauren outlet sign is 6 feet under.

[SmallyWally]

Right on Coldwater! Mother nature WILL take back what is hers. I wonder with all those new business' in Chesterfield Valley, what their cost for flood insurance would be? But hey, why carry insurance if the Corps tells you that the levies will last 100 plus years. Only fools believe, in what the government will tell them.

[Greasy B]

Locating an auto museum in chesterfield valley is a prime example of the level of arrogance and ignorance involved.

[Wayne SW/MO]

Here's what many miss when it comes to floods. The Corp is very active in controlling flow, but mother nature isn't in the supply end. You build levees to direct the water and keep it where you want it confined, then mother nature throws enough water in to make the levees push the water up and flood worse in areas. In protecting some areas the levees have forced more water into areas that weren't at risk before the levees.

The old farmers that farmed the big river bottoms were happy with 2 out of 3 years. The land was made so rich and re energized from floods that they made good money in spite of the floods. Corporate farms change all that, they want every year dry and public financed levees to insure it. They don't need the floods like the old timers did, they can use pumps and chemicals.

[Al Agnew]

Yeah, after the 1993 flood which pretty much wiped out everything in the Chesterfield Bottoms area, there was a lot of lip service about moving developement out of the flood plain. But it lasted about two months before the Corps announced plans for new, bigger, better levees, egged on by the developers, and after that it was full speed ahead on new development.

People have an incorrect idea of what the terms 100 year floods and 500 year floods mean. They don't mean it will be 500 years until the next one, it just means that there is a 1 in 500 chance of it happening in ANY given year. If you're unlucky, it could happen next year, and then the year after that again, and those odds are still way better than playing the lottery. And the Corps isn't infallible, and as was pointed out above, conditions change to where what was once a 1 in 500 chance becomes maybe a 1 in 200 chance or less, due to increased development all over the watershed and new levees everywhere, along with changing weather patterns. I'm with Coldwater, I expect the Chesterfield bottoms to flood again in my lifetime, and I'm getting pretty old.

[Mitch f]

I agree, I always thought the merchants were pretty optimistic after '93.

[Mitch f]

I bet the Gasconade has a lot of new big largemouth bass that were displaced from local Farm ponds that we can catch now.