THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER PROBLEM 23 



year in some of the tributaries, simply because the levee method can 

 not be applied there. It must be admitted that the levee system affords 

 fairly efficient protection from ordinary floods, in so far as damage 

 from overflow in the lower valley is concerned, but its desirability is 

 seriously impaired by the fact that the levees must be constantly 

 replaced. Just as long as the river is allowed to swing against its 

 banks the soft alluvial soil will continue to cave in; levees originally 

 built back from the channel are eventually undermined, rendered useless, 

 and then in cases of high water stages, unless a second line of levees 

 exists, the entire region is open to devastation. Until the sapping 

 action of the river is under control there can be no such thing as a 

 system of levees built once for all. Even the most optimistic advocates 

 of this plan do not claim more than twenty to thirty years for the life 

 of any levee. 



It is undeniable that the army engineers in charge of the work have 

 accomplished much in saving large areas from annual inundation, but 

 they have not to any extent permanently improved the river as a high- 

 way of commerce. Furthermore, they have signally failed in the 

 attempts to stop erosion of the banks, for past experience shows that 

 no style of revetment yet devised will offer more than partial or brief 

 protection from that action. In fifteen years some landings have been 

 forced back more than a mile, and at important points where careful 

 revetting has been done the retreat is said to have exceeded 1,000 feet. 

 The levee-revetment system as now practised may be the simplest way 

 of protecting agricultural interests on the river flats, but it is certainly 

 not the most economical in the end, nor does it in any way afford even 

 a temporary solution of the great problems confronting navigation and 

 river commerce. The heavy expense of maintenance must go on with- 

 out end until the sum total of expenditure will aggregate vastly more 

 than the cost of the proper, permanent remedy. The most serious of 

 all the shortcomings charged against present methods, however, is that 

 they do not strike at the root of the evils. The place to control floods 

 is where they originate, in the tributaries, and thus protect both tribu- 

 tary and main valleys; as well try to fight fires by blowing away the 

 smoke as to control the floods by levees along the lower course. To 

 improve the river to the extent of a fourteen-foot channel to St. Louis 

 would be a foolish waste of money as long as the levee-revetment system 

 is the chief method of control. 



Various other methods of control have been suggested from time to 

 time, but most of them do not appear feasible or to offer the desired 

 results. The rearrangement of tributaries, either by diversion or by 

 addition, has been advocated, since the addition of tributaries to the 

 Po very materially lessened the flood evil, the increased volume and 

 velocity having caused a marked deepening and widening of the channel. 

 In the Mississippi case, however, there are no important streams which 



