Mississippi River Meanders
By: Dr. David Schnare
In 1874, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) wrote: “The military engineers of the Commission have taken upon their shoulders the job of making the Mississippi over again – a job transcended in size by only the original job of creating it.”
The Mississippi River is 2,320 miles long. Maintaining it is a continuous job that has required massive funding – $63 million per year, minimum. Now, consider what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wishes to require of a single local government, Fairfax County, Virginia.
EPA wants to require Fairfax County to change the way the county manages Accotink Creek, a 25 mile long stream. Cost of EPA’s demands? Over $40 million per year, all to reduce the flow in the creek in the hope that it will lessen the amount of sediment falling out on less than 8 miles of the creek.
Accotink Creek
The bugs living in the bottom of that 8 miles of creek aren’t doing all that well. The bugs living in the other 17 miles of the creek are dandy. But down at the end of the creek where the delta spreads out and the flow slows, the sediments from upstream fall to the bottom. As they say in water engineering classes, silt happens.
OK, Fairfax County is rich. But how rich? Let’s make some comparisons of the cost per stream mile to make EPA happy.
The maintenance costs:
- Mississippi River – $26,724 per mile.
- Accotink Creek – $1,600,000 per sq. mile. Ouch!
Gold-plating regulations:
- Cost of plating the Accotink Creek in 24 caret gold leaf – $25.3 million.
- Cost of EPA’s Accotink rule – $40 million.
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Yikes!!
In Genesis 1:28, God gives mankind dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. But, man’s authority is not unlimited. He was not given dominion over the weather, or seasons, or tides. Some things God keeps for himself, or leaves to nature.
The meanders – the twists and turns of our rivers – change over time. They change with large rain events. They change by the simple means of erosion – plain old natural erosion. And when it rains, water digs into the stream bank. The soil flows downstream suspended in the water. It falls out at the bottom of the stream as the water flow slows. If there was no human in Fairfax County, Accotink Creek’s path would still slide and shift. Sediment would still fall out on the bottom of the creek, especially in the last 8 miles.
I have searched for some basis for EPA to hold dominion over the river bed. This is a legal question, and, arguable, EPA can demand a certain level of water quality under the commerce clause, maybe. It is still an open question as to whether they can force a state, or an arm of the state, such as Fairfax County, to take a specific positive act to prevent actual water pollution. Virginia, after all, is a sovereign itself, and while the federal sovereign can tell Virginia what it can’t do, it does not have to the power to tell Virginia what it must do. But, beyond this constitutional question, there is that other thing…..
Maybe EPA can address the water, but the land, that belongs to Virginia. The land making up the stream bank belongs to Virginia. The land beneath the water belongs to Virginia. One can even argue that the land in transit from one place to another (the sediment) belongs to Virginia. Virginia gets to decide what it wants to do with its own land. And Virginia gave a lot of that discretion to Fairfax County for land use within the county.
So, how does EPA get around all this? They actually want to call water a pollutant. What kind of pollutant? A water pollutant. Water is polluting itself!
This is post-normal environmentalism. This is EPA taking on more than the ancients claimed God would give mankind. This is EPA imposing its own religion on Virginia.
Time to bring out the old flags and slogans. We might begin with “Don’t Tread on Me.” Updated, “EPA, keep your hands off my lands.” What unutterable arrogance on the part of this overbearing federal agency. It is time to rein in this agency before it bankrupts our nation’s local governments.
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