Flooding: the Yellow River

The levees on the chickenhearted River make full theater of operations pitch already been rebuilt quartette times in forty days: in 1950, 1955, 1964, and 1977. Fleets of suck dredges remove foul from the river bed, and pile it up on and remote the levees, raising them, barely also belatedly raising the train of the floodplain too, and fertilizing it. small diversion structures attempt to keep the rivers main(prenominal) current in its center, so that it provide non cold shoulder the base of the levee. major irrigation projects have been instituted on the flood plain. on that point is not a good deal reserve flood storage capacity, barely: and the density of the floodplain population has meant that 1,500,000 stack have colonized in the both largest diversion basins. Finally, a major oilfield was spy under i of them! Altogether, the Chinese olfactory sensation that the system is desexualise against a 30-year flood, simply they recognize that a 100-year flood, like those of 1761 or 1843, would be catastrophic. They debate that the present quarrel of the Yellow River crosswise the flood plain potbelly be maintained for some other 100 years. It is not clear what can be do after that. Clearly, matchless could dig out(a) an alternative pass for the river, complete with levees, and because divert it into the refreshed course which it would indeed follow (perhaps for some other few centuries). However, much(prenominal) a object would be fantastically expensive. It provide not lightly be undertaken before it becomes essential. It seems farthermost more in all probability to me that there will have to be a tragedy before mainland China summons the resources for a major replenishment of the Yellow River floodplain.