Flood Control
The 1947 Atlantic hurricane season, which included the 1947 Fort Lauderdale Hurricane and the 1947 October Hurricane, produced very heavy rainfall and flooding over most of central and southern Florida. Florida requested federal assistance in controlling future floods, and in 1954 the United States Congress authorized the canalization of the Kissimmee River. From 1962 to 1970 the United States Army Corps of Engineers dredged the C-38 Canal down the Kissimmee valley, shortening the 103-mile (166 km) distance from Lake Kissimmee to Lake Okeechobee to just 56 miles (90 km). It has since been realized that this project damaged the river, with the faster water flow leading to major environmental problems in the Kissimmee Valley and Lake Okeechobee. Efforts are currently underway to reverse the process and re-introduce the many oxbows in the river that slowed the water.
Read more about this topic: Kissimmee River
Famous quotes containing the words flood and/or control:
“My ark sings in the sun
At God speeded summer’s end
And the flood flowers now.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)