The repairs to Columbia Canal never happened, since another breach opened. National Guard is working diligently to fix everything and somehow water keeps flowing from the taps. The mayor has announced that rumors of an imminent shutdown are false and that they are confident that the system can keep going. That said, I'll probably cross the river to do my laundry Saturday, not out of any fear of water quality but to avoid overuse of water.
In the rest of the state, things are not good and not going to improve soon. Two-thirds of South Carolina is coastal plain. Columbia is strictly speaking part of the Coastal Plain, but sandhills cross the state right here, so we are significantly higher than south and east and, more to the point, less flat. (We were the beach, they were the continental shelf.) South and east of here, especially the nearer to the coast you get, is really flat and characterized by wide, slow rivers. These are about to get much, much wider and much, much slower.
Thus, if you want to help, give money to the American Red Cross marked South Carolina Flood Relief. Don't worry about Columbia; by and large, we'll be fine. (Red Cross doesn't rebuild roads and bridges anyway.) But the South Carolina lowcountry is about to see the worst week or two anyone has seen lately. Or so the governor says. I'm hoping like crazy that she's wrong. But all that water has to go somewhere, and they already had much more than their share.
No comments:
Post a Comment