Moving Rain

Water can light cities, grind grain, and wipe out hillsides.

That water, when it comes down fast and hard in a short time can leave a path of destruction.

One way to drain the torrent of water of some steam is to direct it.  Back in some of the hills in Wisconsin's Driftless region - farmers and engineers looked for a way to channel it.

Between 1907 - 1909 one way they took care of the flooding was with diversions.

A large stone diversion flume moved the water into a reservoir created with an earthen dam across a narrow valley.

Making the ditch and lining it with stone preserved the soil by keeping it in place and sent the water safely downhill.

Just like the ancient aqueducts of the Roman Empire, the early tools used to move life-giving and life-taking water was a way to be a good steward to the land and its bounty.

It's a simple method, but one that required days, months, and years of back-breaking work.  The railroad companies likely participated in the erosion control because rain-swollen ditches threatened their tracks.

Looking at it now, more than a hundred years after it was built, it seems quite elegant.  A problem was seen - a solution was decided upon - and action was taken.

Yet for too long; it seems we can't get our collective will and act together to identify the problem, find a solution, and take action.

Often, haste can make waste.  But increasingly the concept of perfect gets in the way of the good.  It's time to create more flumes to channel the results of our modern storms in productive ways and reduce the wide path of destruction left by unchecked and uncontrolled power.