Holding Back the River; The Struggle Against Nature on America’s Waterways, by Tyler J. Kelly, $27.00 list, $21.54 (Amazon), 224 pages
A revelatory work of reporting on the men and women wrestling to harness and preserve America’s most vital natural resource: our rivers.
The Mississippi. The Missouri. The Ohio. America’s great rivers are the very lifeblood of our country. We need them for nourishing crops, for cheap bulk transportation, for hydroelectric power, for fresh drinking water. Rivers are also part of our mythology, our collective soul; they are Mark Twain, Led Zeppelin, and the Delta Blues. But as infrastructure across the nation fails and climate change pushes rivers and seas to new heights, we’ve arrived at a critical moment in our battle to tame these often-destructive forces of nature.
Tyler J. Kelley spent two years traveling the heartland, getting to know the men and women whose lives and livelihoods rely on these tenuously tamed streams. The result, Holding Back the River, is a deeply human exploration of how our centuries-long dream of conquering and shaping this vast network of waterways squares with the reality of an indomitable natural world.
On the Illinois-Kentucky border, we encounter Luther Helland, master of the most important—and most decrepit—lock and dam in America. This old dam, at the tail end of the Ohio River, was scheduled to be replaced in 1998, but twenty years and $3 billion later, its replacement still isn’t finished. As the old dam crumbles and commerce grinds to a halt, Helland and his team must risk their lives, using steam-powered equipment and sheer brawn, to raise and lower the dam as often as ten times a year.
In Southeast Missouri, we meet Twan Robinson, who lives in the historically Black village of Pinhook. As a super-flood rises on the Mississippi, she learns from her sister that the US Army Corps of Engineers is going to blow up the levee that stands between her home and the river. With barely enough notice to evacuate her elderly mother and pack up a few of her own belongings, Robinson escapes to safety only to begin a nightmarish years-long battle to rebuild her lost community.
Atop a floodgate in central Louisiana, we’re beside Major General Richard Kaiser, the man responsible for keeping North America’s greatest river under control. Kaiser stands above the spot where the Mississippi River wants to change course, abandoning Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and following the Atchafalaya River to the sea. The daily flow of water from one river to the other is carefully regulated, but something else is happening that may be out of Kaiser and the Corps’ control.
America’s infrastructure is old and underfunded. While our economy, society, and climate have changed, our levees, locks, and dams have not. Yet to fix what’s wrong will require more than money. It will require an act of imagination. Meticulously researched and as lively as it is informative, Holding Back the River brings us into the lives of the Americans who grapple with our mighty rivers and, through their stories, suggests solutions to some of the century’s greatest challenges.
Review
The above review was provided by the publishing company and it nicely outlines this very enjoyable read. The book is divided into three parts; The Lock, Alluvial Empire, and Rivers of Earth. There is a forth short section titled, Retreat and Fortify. As the synopsis outlines, each part looks at the river through the eyes of a local person or community who has lived, worked, and had their lives impacted by, the rivers. I was very interested in part one; The Lock, where the challenges of using and maintaining Lock 52, the last lock on the Ohio River. Lock 52 and 53 were the last two of the 51 Chanoine wicket-style movable dams that once created the navigation pools from the Mississippi to Pittsburgh. The US Army Corps of Engineers has been replacing the old locks and dams with 19 larger structures. Locks 52 and 53, which has been replaced by the Olmsted Lock and dam, are located near the confluence with the Mississippi, and is the busiest on the river. The operation of these locks is critical to all navigation along the river.
The author presents these challenges by way of Captain David Stansbury who operates the William Hank, and Locktender Luther Helland and his crew at lock 52. Kelly deftly explains the need for the movable dams, their construction, and workings, of the old wicket-style gates. Unlike the movable bridge dams along the Mohawk River in New York, wicket dams are designed to lie flat on the river bottom when the natural depth of water was suitable for navigation. The Ohio can vary from almost dry to 50-feet-deep. When the river runs high, the tows can float right over the flattened dams. When the river depth falls below 9-feet, the wickets were raised one at a time, and slowly the navigation pool is created. Lock 52 had over 400 such wickets, and most of them had to function in order for traffic to continue. Kelley explains how Helland had to manage and almost trick the old wickets to stay in the raised position. As the book was chronicling events in 2016-2018 period, Kelly was capturing operations at the end of this dams life. A YouTube video showing the operations of this dam was made in 2011.
The reason that the author was able to write this part at all was the length of time it had taken to get the new Olmsted Dam built. Construction had begun in 1995 and it still is not complete today, and Kelley touches on the issues of building a new structure over a 23-year period as those in Washington managed to both provide and remove funding. In the summer of 2018, the new Olmsted Lock and Dam was put into service even though it wasn’t ready for service, but there was little choice as the last two wicket dams at Lock 52 and 53 had completely worn out and were unusable. If you don’t read any further than Part One, the book is certainly worth the purchase.
The second and third parts get into the life of the rivers and how man has tried to control them by way of dredging, levies, flood gates and diversion channels. It often places the local population against the federal government when decades old easements are suddenly activated in times of high water, or when dams stop the flow of sediments and fill up lakes or fail to resupply old deltas. Seeing the confusion and conflict through the eyes of the local population and even through the eyes of the employees of the US Army Corps of Engineers, all aided my understanding of the issues. Although climate change is addressed throughout the book, there is no political agenda presented. The entire book made for a easy and enjoyable read. The book is 224 pages.