2. 外语
  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

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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.
Why have the levees, navigation channels, etc. made the situation worse?
选项 A、Because the development of them only emphasizes economic benefits.
B、Because the design and construction of them are unrealistic.
C、Because they haven’t met the actual demand of people nearby.
D、Because they are a wrong management of the ecosystem.
答案D
解析 由原文可知，持续且不合理地修建堤坝以及航道等造成了比不管理更为严重的损失。由定位句中的破折号可知，这些行为都是对密西西比河生态系统错误管理的举例说明。因此D“因为它们是对生态系统的错误管理”为答案。A“因为它们的开发只强调经济效益”、B“因为它们的设计和建造是不切实际的”和C“因为它们没有满足附近居民的实际需求”均与原文不符，故排除。
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大学英语四级

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