When the Levee breaks

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was an important even for many reasons. Many people were forced to flee to the cities of the Midwest in search of work, contributing to the "Great Migration" of African Americans in the first half of the 20th century. In 1929 Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie wrote and recorded the song English rock group Led Zeppelin would later rework and make famous in 1971 as the last song on there fourth album.
"I's a mean old levee, cause me to weep and moan, gonna leave my baby,
and my happy home". The song focused mainly on when more than 13,000
residents in and near Greenville, Mississippi evacuated to a nearby, unaffected levee
for its shelter at high ground. The tumult that would have been caused
if this and other levees had broken was the song's underlying theme.
After Katrina and the governments failure to help it's own people brought the the fore front once again that the great Mississippi will not be held back. The army core of engineers rebuild the failed levees and assured us they could now stand up to a 100 year storm. 1,836 people lost there lives and the estimated $81.2 billion in damages made Katrina one of the deadliest and certainly the costliest natural disaster in US history.

A June 2007 report released by the American Society of Civil Engineers states that the failures of the federally built levees in New Orleans' were found to be primarily the result of system design flaws.^[119] The US Army Corps of Engineers who by federal mandate
is responsible for the conception, design and construction of the
region's flood-control system failed to pay sufficient attention to
public safety.

According to new modeling and field observations by a team from Louisiana State University, the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet
(MRGO), a 200-meter (660 ft) wide canal designed to provide a shortcut
from New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico, helped provide a funnel for the
storm surge, making it 20% higher and 100%-200% faster as it crashed
into the city. St. Bernard Parish, one of the more devastated areas,
lies just south of the MRGO. The Army Corps of Engineers
disputes this causality and maintains Katrina would have overwhelmed
the levees with or without the contributing effect of the MRGO.^[120]

On April 5, 2006,
months after independent investigators had demonstrated that levee
failures were not caused by natural forces beyond intended design
strength, Lieutenant General Carl Strock testified before the United
States Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Water that "We have now
concluded we had problems with the design of the structure."^[121] He also testified that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not know of this mechanism of failure prior to August 29, 2005.
The claim of ignorance is refuted, however, by the National Science
Foundation investigators hired by the Army Corps of Engineers, who
point to a 1986 study by the Corps itself that such separations were
possible in the I-wall design.^[122]

Compared to Katrina the weather systems causing the current disaster are mild to say the least. Perhaps it's time to let this great river reclaim her wetlands. Wetlands are a vital part of how the planet purifies the water we pollute every day.