{"id":4180,"date":"2015-10-06T10:00:42","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T15:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/jenniferfitz\/?p=4180"},"modified":"2015-10-06T10:25:34","modified_gmt":"2015-10-06T15:25:34","slug":"thinking-about-the-sc-flood-the-lay-of-the-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jenniferfitz\/2015\/10\/thinking-about-the-sc-flood-the-lay-of-the-land\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking About the SC Flood: The Lay of the Land #scflood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In my next post I\u2019m going to talk about the notion of whether the devastating flooding in the Columbia area can, in fact, be considered a \u201c1000-year flood.\u201d \u00a0But before I do that, it will help if you understand some of the words I\u2019m going to use. \u00a0They are place-words, and they may not mean what you think they mean.<\/p>\n

What is \u201cColumbia, SC\u201d?<\/h2>\n

When speaking to outsiders, or speaking of your travel from the hinterlands back to the homeland, one uses the term \u201cColumbia\u201d to mean the vast metropolis centered on two counties smack dab in the middle of South Carolina, and extending arms and fingers\u00a0into several other surrounding counties, with the Capitol Building sitting mostly-ignored there in its center. \u00a0Once on the ground in that metropolis, though, one ceases to speak with such gross imprecision.<\/p>\n

This is rolling terrain. \u00a0The swampy floodplain that hugs the coast sits to the east, though there is some flatland where the city stretches eastward.<\/p>\n

The conglomeration that is \u201cColumbia\u201d is a collection of dozens of cities and towns, pressed together and at times wrapping around each other in shapes to make Picasso squirm. \u00a0Boundary-drawing, in South Carolina, is an art sacred to the politicians, who have no particular concern for the natural world nor common sense.<\/p>\n

Knowing what town you are in is something of a dark art, and the newcomer attempts it his peril. \u00a0If you really wish to know where you live, gather up all your utility bills, study them carefully, and then phone someone who\u2019s been in public works forty years \u2014 in that corner of the city \u2014 and ask them to advise you. \u00a0Pay no attention to your voter registration card, it is a red herring.<\/p>\n

Likewise, you must not take the points of the compass too literally when trying to understand the capital city. Columbia is the place where the two major east-west highways intersect\u00a0at right angles.<\/p>\n

How many rivers are there in Columbia?<\/h2>\n

There are three river-names used in Columbia, and then a pile of creeks no one talks about unless they are flooding. \u00a0(We\u2019ll save creeks for another day. \u00a0Rivers are enough to think about right now.)<\/p>\n

The Broad River comes in from the northwest, and for the purpose of assigning blame, consider it un-dammed. \u00a0By the time it reaches downtown Columbia, it\u2019s been flowing unsupervised far too long to really expect it to behave in a rainstorm.<\/p>\n

The Saluda also comes in from the west, just south of the Broad. \u00a0 It flows out the bottom of Lake Murray just west of the city-center, which means the water is always cold (trout!). \u00a0If you stand on top of the dam (there\u2019s a road) you can see downtown Columbia; if you stand on top of a building in downtown Columbia, you can see the dam.* \u00a0They are that close.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0water flow of the Saluda is largely a balance between the questions of how much electricity the city requires and how full or empty you want the lake to be. \u00a0(People who live on the lake have strong feelings about this, as do people who live under the dam but do not wish to live underwater. Lake levels matter.)<\/p>\n

Right downtown smack dab in the center of everything, the two river converge, forming the Congaree. \u00a0So people say there are three rivers in Columbia, but that\u2019s something of an overstatement.<\/p>\n

Where is the flooding?<\/h2>\n

So we have the Congaree river there in the center of the major metropolis. \u00a0In my next post I\u2019ll talk about the evidence we can gather from the way the city developed around that river. \u00a0What you need to know for now, and you can look at Google Maps as you think about this:<\/p>\n