Patty, The dredging sounds drastic! Been having terrible luck with our river as well. I live right against our levee on the Thames in London Ontario. Our summer was wet. Everything rotted in the garden
Back to rivers and silting. Cities allow paved driveways, huge unbroken parking lots, two lanes through one car an hour neighbourhoods massive roofs dumping straight into the storm sewers. Having allowed this they also allow developers to take down trees. On a stormy night nothing stops or slows the water. It takes everything with it. Cities build "keep it simple stupid" storm sewer systems. They don't adjust to flow. They are designed for maximum flow and to let everything pass. Silt should take years to move out into the river. It takes minutes. Silt should nurture the fish in the river. It suffocates them. Also, in 2000 I witnessed the Thames rise twenty feet in two hours. Early in the deluge of rain the water coming out of the storm sewers was actually driving the main river current sideways against the levee. Its force pushed the river up six to ten feet up the opposite side of the river in a kind of an arch against a 45 degree angled, thirty foot high concrete bank! Healthy rivers are the key to healthy gardens. Bad river management is a national probem. Silted up rivers don't have rapids and pool formations, side to side turn over etc which keeps the water aerated and the microbes in balance. So, the river which is a huge moving composter of everything becomes sour like bad stinky compost. That rancet waste gets buried in the silt. All of the birds that feed along the silt also shit in our gardens! It is a real source of food contamination for growers. Don't eat the snails. Studies of cities at the turn of the century showed that people living closest to the river had the greatest occurrence of diseases and this declined the farther people lived from the river. So, dredging might be necessary once more but.... tax all diveways that don't absorb runoff. tax all roof tops larger than 1000 sq ft that don't have a cistern tax all tree removal give incentives for tree replacements incremental and adjusted to size number of trees to the size of the land support marsh lands in cities ask for flood land reserves to be set aside so that storm sewers don't dump directly into rivers put rocks back into rivers in a way that establishes side to side meander patterns. make the river healthy. If you have shipping on your river that makes it really tough. ~ robyn ________________________________ From: patty villa <[email protected]> To: [email protected]; Don Boekelheide <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 8:36:58 PM Subject: Re: [Community_garden] Under water (Fred Conrad) Sorry, sounds like you got our weather this year. It's been hot and dry in the Puget Sound region this summer. We have had a lot of flooding too and have come to the conclusion that we have to get the ability back to dredge our rivers again. It was determined some years ago that dredging was bad, but since then silt and debris have built up to the same level as the levees, if not higher in some places, and the flooding has been horrible. The so called 100 year floods happen annually now here at the base of Mt Rainier. I hope that you don't face the same issue there. It's been an uphill battle for a few years. --- On Wed, 9/23/09, Don Boekelheide <[email protected]> wrote: From: Don Boekelheide <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Community_garden] Under water (Fred Conrad) To: [email protected] Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2009, 5:25 PM My golly, Fred, have you considered organic rice production? Meanwhile, Charlotte is getting a tiny bit of rain, but nothing like you folks! Hang in there, Atlanta, it sounds pretty challenging. Don Charlotte, NC www.urbanministrycenter.org > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:30:21 -0400 > From: "Fred Conrad" <[email protected]> > Subject: [Community_garden] Under water > To: <[email protected]> > Message-ID: > <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; > charset="us-ascii" > > Checking in from Atlanta. We have three gardens under > water! Good bye > compost, hello e.coli! > > Just sharing. > > fgc > > Fred Conrad > Community Garden Coordinator > Atlanta Community Food Bank > 732 Joseph E Lowery Blvd, NW, Atlanta, GA 30318 > ph: 678.553.5932 fx: 678.553.5933 > [email protected] > <http://www.acfb.org> > Our mission is to fight hunger by engaging, educating and > empowering our > community. > _______________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. 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