Hurricanes Helene and Milton Hit Florida, as Greenies Downgrade Water Infrastructure

by Richard Freeman

[Print version of this article]

Nov. 6—Florida was struck by two hurricanes within the span of two weeks: Hurricane Helene hit Sept. 27, near the capital Tallahassee, then swept north. It killed 19 people in the state. Hurricane Milton made landfall Oct. 9 on Florida’s central Gulf Coast, then crossed the state to the Atlantic, leaving at least 29 people dead. Combined, they outright destroyed or damaged several thousand homes, workplaces, stores, schools, and submerged cars, livestock, citrus groves, etc.

Florida is historically well known to be in the hurricane zone of the Western Hemisphere, yet the cause of the damage from Helene and Milton was immediately attributed to recent “global warming” by the environmentalist controllers and the yapping dogs of the press.

This is in line with how the government of Florida, which has a dearth of flood control infrastructure, is nevertheless in the process of tearing down flood control systems, in the name of protecting, not man, but swamps. It sees the state as returning to a mythical life of “early, pristine nature.”

Peninsula a Challenge To Protect

Florida’s morphology as a flat peninsula makes it a challenge to protect from storms. The state’s topography is opposite to the Appalachian ridge and valley landforms. Florida has 1,350 statute miles of coastline, with key harbors, extensive beaches (825 miles), coastal plains, and other features, as well as inland agricultural, industrial, and residential concentrations. Both inland drainage and retention of storm water systems are necessary, as well as coastal defenses. Engineers do have projects for these water control functions, to protect terrain of all kinds, through erecting seawalls, breakwaters, and revetments along the coast; and onshore, through building dams and levees, and fortifying and channeling rivers.

An overview of Florida’s water infrastructure can be gleaned by reviewing two critical features evaluated by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 2021 “report card” on the state. For condition of dams, the ASCE engineers and researchers give a rating grade of D-, which constitutes a dire warning. Florida has 996 dams, of which 98 are classified as High Hazard Dams, referring to the consequences if they break down.

For the condition of coastal areas infrastructure, the ASCE gave Florida a C-. The report card states, “Approximately 62% of Florida’s 825 miles (1,337 km) of sandy shoreline shows signs of erosion and over 50% are identified as critically eroded.” The report states that to ameliorate this erosion requires nearly $6.5 billion, but Florida allocates only $50 million per year.

Restore the Swamps

Where this is trending is dramatically shown by the program underway to remove water control infrastructure from the Everglades, and bring back the swamps. In other words, let’s go back to the Pleistocene, pre-civilization era.

The Everglades is a large tropical wetland and swamp in southern Florida. Before drainage attempts, the Everglades took up approximately one-third of Florida’s total 66,000 square miles (170,000 square kilometers). This is part of a large watershed that starts in the vicinity of central Florida, and which, during the wet seasons, can end up flooding areas with a thin, shallow flow, known as a sheet flow. As man settled Florida, he saw the possibilities of taming the Everglades, for agricultural purposes.

From 1962 to 1971, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) built the C-38 canal in Florida’s Everglades, which replaced a meandering 90-mile (140 km) stretch of a river with a 52-mile (84 km) canal. It supplanted the swamp on approximately 45,000 acres (180 square km) with a system of retention ponds, dams and vegetation that significantly reduced flooding. Other structures of a similar useful nature were constructed.

The eco-fascist movement claimed that these waterworks upset the habitat as a whole, and represented an intrusion of urban areas into the wilderness. In 1994, Florida Governor Lawton Chiles introduced the Everglades Forever Act, which said that the “Everglades must be restored both in terms of water quality and water quantity and must be preserved and protected in a manner that is long term and comprehensive.” Since that time, the effort has been to tear down infrastructure, and thus increase the possibility of flooding. Various parts of canals and water management infrastructure are back-filled or razed to the ground.

Note that Governor Chiles’ directive on the Everglades came just two years after the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which went on to institutionalize pressure against infrastructure worldwide, in the false name of protecting the climate and biodiversity.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers itself has been “greened” in carrying out green directives. The USACE has a brilliant history, with input directly from France’s Ecole Polytechnique of Lazard Carnot, and the Corps led the construction of hugely important technological-infrastructure projects during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The USACE fortunately still has some good people and good projects in it, but especially after the 1993 Mississippi River flood, its mission has been increasingly changed to supply eco-restoration, and “re-naturization,” not economic benefits. A Florida division of the Corps runs the Ecosystem Restoration Project with a focus including the “eco-improvement” of the Everglades. By 2021, this project had taken down mile after mile of the C-38 canal.

At present, a significant portion of the funding for water management infrastructure in Florida that the U.S. and state governments allocate, goes for this eco-insanity. This ultimately sucks funds away from necessary flood control and water management projects that should be constructed and would have a beneficial outcome. That is the backdrop to, and cause of the lives lost, and damage, from Hurricanes Helene and Milton.