OUR OPINION: Peterson’s idea could transform valley
August 30, 2010 at 6:00 pm in Grand Forks Herald
For all of these reasons, scientists, elected officials and the public in both Minnesota and North Dakota should start paying close attention. The water-retention idea is enormous and could dramatically change valley communities’ flood risks. Continue Reading
Drain tile is usually used to speed water from the fields to streams and rivers with the result wetland waterfowl habitats are destroyed. I not sure what Peterson means by incl. tileing in the plan.
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No, that’s not the usual usage at all. It’s water management, not really what you think of as drainage. Under the farm bill you can’t stay in and drain wetlands, yet people are tiling all over the country and increasingly, in North Dakota. They aren’t draining wetlands they are making their land more productive under the wide variety of situation crops encounter in a year.
One of the repeatedly documented characteristics of drain tile is that it’s use tends to lower peak floods, it does this by helping reduce the times of great risk when land is saturated and water can only flow off.
If you would have had Richland County drain tiled, it wouldn’t have gone into winter saturated with water, result in the spring would have been less total runoff.
Much in water management seems counterintuitive. Drain tiles reducing flooding is one of those situations.
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Thanks Marvin. I wasn’t very aware of the angle you describe. Having lived in SW Minn. for about 15 yrs back in the 70s-80s I saw tiling that did what you say it does but yet wetlands were destroyed and not replaced as they are now. The tiling in the Minnesota River watershed led to almost annual floods all the way to the Twin Cities and resulted in the creation of the largest urban National wildlife refuge in the world in the MN. R. Valley because developers are unable to get insurance for river bottom building. Iowa has eliminated by tiling 99% of its wetlands over the years and yes has very productive farmland but at the expense of natural habitat for wildlife.
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