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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

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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.
What is the author’s assessment of the Corps?
选项 A、It has done nothing useful in flood control.
B、It has caused great damage to the ecosystem.
C、It has played an important role in emergency.
D、It has justified its projects effectively.
答案C
解析 题干中的assessment意为“评价”，据此判断本题考查的是作者对工兵部队的看法。定位句中的短语give sb.one’s due意为“公正地对待某人”。作者认为应公正地评价工兵部队，它在当前的危机中表现出色，由此判断C“它在紧急情况下发挥了重要作用”为答案。A“它在控制洪水中没有发挥任何作用”和原文意思不符，故排除；B“它给生态系统造成了极大破坏”夸大了原文意思，故排除；D“它已经证明了它所建造工程的有效性”原文未提及，故排除。
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