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  3. The thousands of people forced to abandon their homes in recent weeks to floodwaters are victims not just of nature but of human

The thousands of people forced to abandon their homes in recent weeks to floodwaters are victims not just of nature but of human

admin2012-08-10  65
问题     The thousands of people forced to abandon their homes in recent weeks to floodwaters are victims not just of nature but of human error as well. Years of mismanagement of the vast Mississippi River ecosystem—the continuous and often inadvisable construction of levees (堤坝) and navigation (导航) channels, the paving over of wetlands, the commercial development of flood plains—have made the damage worse than it might otherwise have been.
    The Obama administration is now completing an inspection of the guidelines governing dams, levees and other water-related projects built with federal money.
    Historically, projects had been shaped by two main factors; the Army Corps of Engineers’ conviction that nature can be subdued by levees and dams, and its reflexive green-lighting of any flood control project that encouraged commercial or agricultural development. The new rules, Congress said, should require the Corps and other federal agencies to give equal weight to less easily measurable benefits like wildlife habitat and to "nonstructural" solutions to flood control like preserving wetlands, flood plains and other " natural systems. "
    To give the Corps its due, it has performed nobly in the present emergency. Its main-stem levees have held. Its decision to blow holes in levees guarding the New Madrid floodway in Missouri clearly saved Cairo, Illinois, and other places downstream. These methods had long been part of Corps emergency plans, and they worked.
    The question the environmental community and many in Congress are asking is whether this would have been necessary if the river had been better managed. In populated areas, some levees were built solely to attract more development, while others closed off flood plains that could have acted as a natural safety valve.
    Meanwhile, over the years, the upper Mississippi watershed has lost millions of acres of wetlands that could have served as a natural sponge for floodwaters.
    So-called 100-year floods seemed to be hitting the Mississippi with scary regularity—a $ 16 billion flood in 1993, a bad one in 2001, another in 2008, and now this one. Climate change, which some suspect of causing violent downpours, may be part of the problem, though the connection is unclear. What is clear is that we should learn from our mistakes, let nature help out where it can, and not build or farm in places where it makes no sense to do so. As the saying goes, nobody ever beats the river.
What is the Congress’s suggestion to the Corps and federal agencies?
选项 A、They should pay equal attention to nature and its function.
B、They should encourage commercial and agricultural development.
C、They should replace their projects with "nonstructural" solutions.
D、They should give wildlife habitat more attention and protection.
答案A
解析 事实细节题。定位句中的should一词是建议的标识词，should后面的give equal weight to与A)中的pay equal attention to意思一致，故A)“他们应给予自然及其功能相同的重视”为答案。B)“他们应鼓励经济和农业发展”是工兵部队建设工程的目的，而不是国会的建议，故排除；C)“他们应用非工程性方法替代他们的工程”过于片面，国会的建议是非工程性方法也应得到重视，而不是说这一方法能替代其他的方法，故排除；D)“它们应给予野生动物栖息地更多的重视和保护”和原文意思不符，国会的意思是野生动物栖息地应受到同等重视，故排除。
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