Of all the South Dakota public radio Midday noon interviews, Janklow's rant against the core of engineers and his attempt to rewrite history and the weather, this must be one of the worst they could find to rerun. But, rerun it they did this noon December 27, 2011.
Janklow uses his usual diversions with expressions like "everybody knew" except perhaps the arrogant Corps of Engineers. Nobody knew for sure that a lot of snow would melt very rapidly or that multiple inches of rain over a large area of still frozen ground would significantly raise reservoir water levels. Janklow also claims that none of the people building homes mere inches above the river water level could possibly have known they were in a flood plain. And, just to add some more of the "everybody knows" humbug, Janklow never met another military officer in his military years as arrogant as those in US Army Corp of Engineers and his father died in the military too...as a lawyer he forgot to mention. Despite Janlow's asertion, I have met few military current or former officers which did not seem to me to have more than their share of arrogance and ignorance.
Janlow as noted before at Dakota Today, did indeed sue the Corps of Engineers, but his suit was to raise the water levels to benefit South Dakota recreation. Janklow doesn't note that as a waste of tax payer's money, but does claim that releasing water to maintain Missouri and Mississippi River levels for barge traffic was a very wasteful subsidy. Seems like 6 of 1 and a half dozen of the other to me.
Give Janklow credit, He knows how to twist facts into nonsense and make rewrites of history even sound plausible at times. He knows how to ignore salient facts and use his mighty Wurlitzer histrionics to emphasize irrelevancy to the highest hill.
The whole broadcast is classic Janklow. His find an enemy to demean to make himself look better has been his life's work. One other little Janklow diversion of a question. Midday moderator asked a question concerning Gov. Daugaard's performance related to flooding, etc. Janklow responded after only minutes before acting as an expert on weather and rivers for about 1000 miles up and downstream, by saying that he just couldn't comment on somebody 200 miles awary.
And speaking of highest hills, South Dakota and US governments should only spend money to move houses out of a huge and obvious flood zone. If water releases of 150,000 cu ft per second can cause such damage, perhaps those homeowners enamored with living next to the formerly mighty Missouri might remember those dam flood gates can actually release over 500,000 cuft per second. Those high release rates were made because of historical flood data.
*** Stay tuned even if you are not so ignorant of history (and geography, and hydrology)_ that you are damned to relive history--- Doug Wiken
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