River Avulsion and the Environmental Legacy of Neglect: Environmental Injustice in the Mississippi River Floodplain

Keywords: urban flooding, floodplain management, cost-benefit analysis
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 74

Abstract

The success of industries within the Mississippi River floodplain has required extensive efforts to control flooding. Nowhere is this more evident than in the American Bottom. Here, the Mississippi River floodplain can become inundated not only during flood stages of the Mississippi River, but also when rainstorms drive runoff from bluffs bounding the floodplain to the east. Complicating matters are the abrupt changes in the slopes of bluff-draining channels, which have driven incidents of avulsion across the floodplain. Occurring naturally, this process would provide a mechanism for aggradation within the distal floodplain. But occurring within the built environment, this process drives chronic and damaging floods, particularly for vulnerable communities like Centreville, Illinois. Centreville, a predominantly Black community founded in part to support the manufacturing industries of the American Bottom, has suffered from decades of flooding from avulsing bluff-draining channels. Despite requests to federal agencies for assistance, it was declared that the community was on the wrong side of cost-benefit calculations to justify support for channel restoration. In this work, we review the legacy of modern flood control strategies of the Mississippi River floodplain for communities like Centreville. After decades of flooding, declining property values have locked residents in place where compounded infrastructure problems have condemned homes and compromised water quality. Unless the process that justifies the allocation of resources to river restoration is changed, poor communities and communities of color will increasingly suffer poorly managed riverscapes, a problem that requires new engagement from geomorphologists and hydrologists alike.