If any of you are near the west side of New Orleans the corps of engineers will be opening 38 bays of the Bonnet Carre Spillway flood control structure tomorrow (Wednesday). If you’ve never seen it it...
If you get a chance, check out The Control of Nature by John McPhee -- part of the book is about the control structures on the Mississippi. Excellent book, brilliant writer.
Other parts of the book are about debris flows in California and lava flows in Iceland.