Park flood watch 2019 and a possible solution!

Old pic (2017) of past flood of Bulls Shoals by Shadowrock Park

Forsyth MO. - Once again I was destined to sadly watch two area parks flood out. In general this had been happening about every two years or so. And, if you look at the rainfall data I had compiled at right, you can see that even on semi-normal year of rainfall, the parks could still become inundated. So what gives?

Bull Shoals Dam

Part of the problem lies within the state of Arkansas. Whenever that region gets above average rates of rainfall, we here in southwest Missouri will suffer as the Corps of Engineers are often forced to restrict the Bull Shoals dam (located in NE Arkansas) release rates.This creates a situation similar to what the kids did by building a cofferdam in the barrens in the Stephen King novel 'It'. Their actions caused all the sewage in the town of Derry Maine to back up and what a mess that was! That sort of describes what occurs whenever that dam in Arkansas cannot release enough water. The entire Bull Shoals reservoir backs up and large scale flooding results.

Canal in California

What exacerbates the problem, even more so, is the upstream reservoirs of Beaver and Table-Rock lakes which, when above full pools, feed the excess water into the 13 mile stretch of Taneycomo lake when then overflows the Powersite Dam on into Bull Shoals which then floods out valuable real estate. In my limited view, this entire string of reservoirs and dams was poorly thought out starting back in the 50's when the dams were constructed.Yet, perhaps, that was all that could be done at the time...

So what might be one possible solution? My thought was to obtain Federal funding for the construction of a canal, similar to what is commonly seen in California, that could run straight down to the Gulf of Mexico! Such an effort would cost billions of dollars, but could also act as a 450 mile long reservoir that could have mini hydro electric generators installed along it route to supply electricity to the towns and cities that were impacted by its construction. This could be a win-win situation for that entire region of the Central United States.