Cairo, Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico Mile 953 A.H.P. to Mile 22 B.H.P.

In 1988, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began an investigation of the benefits and costs of extending several locks on the lower portion of the Upper Mississippi River-Illinois Waterway (UMR-IWW) in order to relieve increasing waterway congestion, particularly for grain moving to New Orleans for export. With passage of the Flood Control Act of 1936, Congress required that the Corps conduct a benefit-cost analysis as part of its water resources project planning; Congress will fund water resources projects only if a project's benefits exceed its costs. As economic analysis generally, and benefit-cost analysis in particular, has become more sophisticated, and as environmental and social considerations and analysis have become more important, Corps planning studies have grown in size and complexity. The difficulty in commensurating market and nonmarket costs and benefits also presents the Corps with a significant challenge. The Corps' analysis of the UMR-IWW has extended over a decade, has cost roughly $50 million, and has involved consultations with other federal agencies, state conservation agencies, and local citizens. The analysis has included many consultants and has produced dozens of reports. In February 2000, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) requested that the National Academies review the Corps' final feasibility report. After discussions and negotiations with DOD, in April 2000 the National Academies launched this review and appointed an expert committee to carry it out.

This paper navigational chart book covers the Mississippi River from Minneapolis, MN to Cairo, IL and the Minnesota & St. Croix Rivers. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers paper navigational chart books are published to benefit both the professional and recreational maritime community. These chart books are spiral bound with sturdy covers and are designed for heavy service on any bridge. Mariners will find not only navigational charts within the pages of this chart book, but critical navigational safety information such as information pertaining to buoys, vertical clearances under bridges, warning to pleasure boaters and fisherman to include restricted and danger area boundaries; locks and dams; signals, lockage of tows; moorings and more. Well defined chart legends, and multiple indices make this chart book more than a simple navigational tool. The U.S Coast Guard requires that commercial vessels operating in the waters represented within the pages of this chart book maintain on-board "navigation charts or maps appropriate to the area of operation..." (46 CFR Subchapter M). This chart book fulfills that requirement. However, it is incumbent on mariners to manually update these products and U.S. Coast Guard Notice to Mariners for changes and notices impacting these waters. Related products: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Navigation Charts collection is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/transportation-navigation/almanacs-navigation-guides/usace-navigational-charts Navigation by Water resources collection is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/transportation-navigation/almanacs-navigation-guides/navigation-water Other products produced by the United States Army, Army Corps of Engineers is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/agency/919

While John McPhee was working on his previous book, Rising from the Plains, he happened to walk by the engineering building at the University of Wyoming, where words etched in limestone said: "Strive on--the control of Nature is won, not given." In the morning sunlight, that central phrase--"the control of nature"--seemed to sparkle with unintended ambiguity. Bilateral, symmetrical, it could with equal speed travel in opposite directions. For some years, he had been planning a book about places in the world where people have been engaged in all-out battles with nature, about (in the words of the book itself) "any struggle against natural forces--heroic or venal, rash or well advised--when human beings conscript themselves to fight against the earth, to take what is not given, to rout the destroying enemy, to surround the base of Mt. Olympus demanding and expecting the surrender of the gods." His interest had first been sparked when he went into the Atchafalaya--the largest river swamp in North America--and had learned that virtually all of its waters were metered and rationed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' project called Old River Control. In the natural cycles of the Mississippi's deltaic plain, the time had come for the Mississippi to change course, to shift its mouth more than a hundred miles and go down the Atchafalaya, one of its distributary branches. The United States could not afford that--for New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and all the industries that lie between would be cut off from river commerce with the rest of the nation. At a place called Old River, the Corps therefore had built a great fortress--part dam, part valve--to restrain the flow of the Atchafalaya and compel the Mississippi to stay where it is. In Iceland, in 1973, an island split open without warning and huge volumes of lava began moving in the direction of a harbor scarcely half a mile away. It was not only Iceland's premier fishing port (accounting for a large percentage of Iceland's export economy) but it was also the only harbor along the nation's southern coast. As the lava threatened to fill the harbor and wipe it out, a physicist named Thorbjorn Sigurgeirsson suggested a way to fight against the flowing red rock--initiating an all-out endeavor unique in human history. On the big island of Hawaii, one of the world's two must eruptive hot spots, people are not unmindful of the Icelandic example. McPhee went to Hawaii to talk with them and to walk beside the edges of a molten lake and incandescent rivers. Some of the more expensive real estate in Los Angeles is up against mountains that are rising and disintegrating as rapidly as any in the world. After a complex coincidence of natural events, boulders will flow out of these mountains like fish eggs, mixed with mud, sand, and smaller rocks in a cascading mass known as debris flow. Plucking up trees and cars, bursting through doors and windows, filling up houses to their eaves, debris flows threaten the lives of people living in and near Los Angeles' famous canyons. At extraordinary expense the city has built a hundred and fifty stadium-like basins in a daring effort to catch the debris. Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking in his vivid depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those who would attempt to wrest control from her--stubborn, often ingenious, and always arresting characters.

"Each time the waters of the mighty Mississippi River overflow their banks, questions arise anew about the battle between "man" and "river". How can we prevent floods and the damage they inflict while maintaining navigational potential and protecting the river's ecology?" "The design of the Mississippi and how it should proceed has long been a subject of controversy. What is missing from the discussion, say the authors of this book, is an understanding of the representations of the Mississippi River. Landscape architect Anuradha Mathur and architect/planner Dilip da Cunha draw together an array of perspectives on the river and show how these different images have played a role in the process of designing and containing the river landscape. Analyzing maps, hydrographs, working models, drawings, photographs, government and media reports, painting, and even folklore, Mathur and da Cunha consider what these representations of the river portray, what they leave out, and why that might be. With original silk screen prints and a selection of maps, the book joins historic, scientific, engineering, and natural views of the river to create an entirely new portrait of the great Mississippi."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved