Engineering contributed to the increased frequency and severity of floods on the Mississippi as well as environmental damage

See ‘The Great River’ Review: Taming the Mighty Mississippi: Engineers have tried—with varying degrees of success—to reshape the river to human needs by Gerard Helferich. Excerpt:

"Today’s Mississippi is a human creation, engineered from source to mouth. Despite such Herculean effort, the frequency and severity of floods have worsened over the past century. The engineering is a major contributor, since levees direct more and faster-moving water downstream. As the average amount of yearly rainfall flowing in the Mississippi increases over time, and as more land along the river is paved (creating more runoff), it is “slowly becoming a river that our levees cannot contain,” Mr. Upholt warns. He also catalogs the environmental damage caused by our attempts to shape the river, including flooded forests and disappearing animal species. Meanwhile, New Orleans continues to sink, and the river’s delta, spreading south of the city, loses 800,000 square feet of wetland every day in the face of rising sea levels."