The Control of Nature

Debris basins are large pits that engineers design to trap debris and prevent it from rolling down a mountainside—and into the homes of unsuspecting residents, in the case of Los Angeles. The Army Corps of Engineers praises debris basins; residents sleep securely knowing that they’re in place. However, debris basins are not always successful in stopping the debris, and the city of Los Angeles must spend millions of dollars reinforcing these basins for comparatively few residents.

In Iceland, although the water pumping crews prevented the flow from the 1973 volcanic eruption from crossing the harbor and into Heimaey, another part of the volcano split off and began floating toward the town. The floating volcano became known as “Flakkarin the Wanderer.” Thorbjorn and crew cooled the lava in Flakkarin’s path, letting seawater solidify the hot core of the lava. The method seemed to work, as Flakkarin broke up upon its approach to the town. However, Flakkarin led the townsfolk to wonder if their cooling efforts may have made things worse by leading the lava directly to the town.

This is the nickname for the Los Angeles County Flood Control District, which manages the costly, football-stadium-sized debris basins in the San Gabriel mountains. 

In 1950, the Atchafalaya consumed about 30% of the water running through the Old River. Congress believed that this rate was the ideal flow, also known as the “latitude flow.” Therefore, the Army Corps dedicated its time to forcibly maintaining river levels to the 1950 latitude flow for subsequent decades to minimize the chance of the Atchafalaya growing too strong. Maintaining this flow entailed creating a new canal, leading to a completely new version of the Old River. However, many saw the Corps’s measures as a foolhardy attempt to turn back time.

Following a series of floods in the 1860s that caused multiple levees the fail, Congress set up the Mississippi River Commission and delegated responsibilities over flood control to the Army Corps of Engineers. This Commission set up the Corps’s influence in the region for generations to come, even though Mark Twain and others criticizes the attempts to control the Mississippi. In the 1900s, the Corps launched a boat that went up and down the Mississippi to field civilian complaints as part of the Commission’s work in the area. 

A navigation lock is a man-made mechanism that allows ships to artificially drop several feet and navigate different parts of a river—in this case, the Mississippi River.

The Old River is a cross-section connecting the Atchafalaya and the Mississippi; engineers determine that the Old River is the most likely area where the Atchafalaya will overwhelm the Mississippi. If that happens, southern Louisiana will become uninhabitable, decimating both New Orleans and the coastal economy. Therefore, the Army Corps launched a full-on assault on the Atchafalaya by putting in place a structure called the Old River Control to hold back the forces of the threatening river.

The San Gabriel mountain range sits right next to Los Angeles County, such that many homes in northeast Los Angeles back up against the mountains. This mountain range is the site of a clash between nature and Los Angeles residents and developers, as debris flows send boulders and other sludge down the mountainside periodically due to rain and fire.