Does tilling the ground make it rain more??? Cause 12 inches in 48 hours will do this to you.
Sandbagging at Hilton
- Thread starter Cyclonepride
- Start date
Originally Posted by DrClone 
I wonder how much the increased frequency of floods in Iowa is due to the increase in tiling the farmers are doing in their fields. Now farmers are putting tile lines between the tile lines in their fields. I would guess that the soil would hold more moisture until the increase in tiling has resulted in more rapid drainage of the cropland and consider the millions of acres that are being drained into our streams and rivers. I realize that a substantial amount of rain is still needed in a fairly short period of time. If not for all the tiling that has been done in the last 20-30 years, why would we be having so many 100 year floods in the last 20 years. :wideeyed:
Does tilling the ground make it rain more??? Cause 12 inches in 48 hours will do this to you.
Tiling would actually help prevent a flood like this. When the rivers and creeks are so hi, tiling can't drain the fields at all. The outlets to the tiles are below the water line. They behavior at that point is as if the tiles weren't even there.
However, tiling would actually help a flood like this. I believe this affected area had heavy rain in early August as well. With tiling, the excess water was able to be drained from the fields more quickly, thus allowing the fields to soak up more water on the first 2 nights of of this flood event. If those fields hadn't been tiled, the early August rain would have caused them to be even more saturated when the first rain hit this time, causing more runoff on Sunday and Monday and likely even worse flooding than was seen today.
Originally Posted by DrCloneI wonder how much the increased frequency of floods in Iowa is due to the increase in tiling the farmers are doing in their fields. Now farmers are putting tile lines between the tile lines in their fields. I would guess that the soil would hold more moisture until the increase in tiling has resulted in more rapid drainage of the cropland and consider the millions of acres that are being drained into our streams and rivers. I realize that a substantial amount of rain is still needed in a fairly short period of time. If not for all the tiling that has been done in the last 20-30 years, why would we be having so many 100 year floods in the last 20 years. :wideeyed:Does tilling the ground make it rain more??? Cause 12 inches in 48 hours will do this to you.
I understand your point, but when 1993 was record rainfall and this summer has had more rainfall than any summer EVER, how does tilling have anything to do with this... Don't really want this one to go to cave.
Since nobody else has responded, my wife (who's a student there) didn't know of any water getting in. Granted, it's on a little higher ground than the rest of the buildings in the area.
The back to back to back rains filled the basin with 13 uinches of rain. It was more than Walmart parking lots that had the runoff increase. Xhannels lift or lower with time dependiong on jhow much flow goes down them. Perhaps trees grew into the channel downstream and backed up more water. A leaky reservoir might still work for this short flood protection. Believe me, there are plenty opf methods now days to plug leaky reservoirs.The federal govt could push a project and locals might pay 35 per cent.
Not saying that your idea is totally without merit, but do you have any idea what 26,500 gpm worth of pumping capacity looks like, physically? This pump is somewhere a little shy of 20,000 gpm.
Your calcs show about 38 mgd. This entire pump station is capable of about 45 mgd.
I'm not sure what you are envisioning, but these are actual facilities. Granted, for a flood situation, you're dealing with lower lift so the size and HP requirements will allow facilities to be somewhat smaller. You may also recommend a different pump configuration. But this should give you an idea of the facilities involved. Now picture you've got to probably install new power service, standby generation. Also a configuration like the second picture with more, smaller pumps for firm capacity, variable speed to better match flow conditions. You're going to need an enormous wet well to ensure adequate NPSH so the pumps don't cavitate and to keep them from cycling too frequently, one that's probably going to need to be constructed in groundwater. And all of this is to protect Hilton only.
I think being significantly less expensive and invasive is highly questionable.
It doesn't matter (much) where the outlet is. As long as the water in the fields is higher that the water at the outlet, the tiles will drain the fields. The higher the water at the outlet rises, the slower it will drain as the static head differential approaches zero.
I see what you're saying, but you're still better off with the ease in saturation caused by tiles that you get. Water funneled by the tiles is going to give you more time than water running of the already saturated field.
