The Washington Post quotes environmental experts who argue that the record-breading Iowa flooding these last few days aren’t simply acts of God.
As the theory goes, the levee breaches can be attributed to radically remade landscapes:
Plowed fields have replaced tallgrass prairies. Fields have been meticulously drained with underground pipes. Streams and creeks have been straightened. Most of the wetlands are gone. Flood plains have been filled and developed.
In Iowa, thanks in large part to the ethanol boom, corn will cover a third of the state’s landscape this year. And with increased cultivation comes decreased river buffers.
Indeed, just in the last year, Iowa farmers, ready to capitalize on corn prices have taken 106,000 acres of largely river-front farmland out of conservation programs aimed at recreating those natural wetland buffers.
A sampling of reader comments to the controversial Post piece are here.
Virtual Farmgirl 