Mississippi Flooding Record Rivals 1927, as Emergency Raises Need for LaRouche Credit Plan

May 29, 2019 (EIRNS)—As of the end of May, the Mississippi River flooding will have reached record durations at many points, e.g. 147 days at Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Eight Mississippi Valley states have experienced the longest flooding since the Great Flood of 1927. But the ongoing rains and storms mean many more days of high water still ahead.

This year’s massive, lingering storm systems—comparable in the last century to 1927 and 1993—have also brought tornadoes, seen most recently in Ohio, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri. These tornado disasters have been pounced on by the fake news media, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Green crowd as “proof” of global warming, and therefore the need to de-structure the nation. Curiously, the continuously worsening flooding itself, despite far worse impact, is getting no such national media attention!

In fact, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Weather Service have been able to track and forecast the current heavy rainfall period for months, and “the sky isn’t falling.” The flooding and disasters are from huge pressure and weather systems, which have happened before, on varying geographic scales.

President Donald Trump, en route home from Japan, posted his personal and FEMA messages of support to several Midwest governors, including those of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. A funding package for FEMA and other relief still is gummed up in Congress. The Senate bill, passed last week 85-8, awaits passage in the House, but yesterday’s end-run attempt at passage again failed.

What the massive Midwest disaster points up is the urgent need for emergency and long-term national credit, through the Hamiltonian economic system put forward by Lyndon LaRouche in his June 8, 2014 statement: “The Four New Laws To Save the U.S.A. Now! Not an Option: An Immediate Necessity.”

One marker of the volume of Midwest river run-off is that the two huge diversion channels on standby in Louisiana—very seldom used—will now both be in operation as of this weekend. On June 2 or thereabouts, the Army Corps of Engineers will open the Morganza Spillway, marking only the third time this has happened in 46 years. The structure was opened in 1954, and was used in the floods of 1973 for 56 days, and in 2011 for 55 days. The water will spill into the Atchafalaya Basin.

On May 10, Bonnet Carré Spillway was opened in Louisiana. Since its first operation in 1937, this is only the 14th time it has been used, and the second time since Feb. 27 this year—a record. The water is channeled into Lake Ponchartrain, and thence into the Gulf of Mexico. Both spillways divert water away from New Orleans, which nevertheless is still under threat from the huge run-off now underway.

Leaders from the many Missouri-Mississippi states have activated not only their own agencies, from the National Guard to social services, but have also appealed to many Federal agencies for help, including, besides FEMA, and the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These combined agriculture and manufacturing states, are suffering economic crisis from the multiple factors of prolonged low farm income, the last 15 months of China trade conflict, the general lack of infrastructure—including high-speed rail, nuclear power, and especially water management—and now the storms and flooding.