You are not catching on my friend. That is precisely the issue, that the straightening of the rivers... you are aware that was done, right? ... and channeling t

You are not catching on my friend. That is precisely the issue, that the straightening of the rivers... you are aware that was done, right? ... and channeling them out of wetlands, flood plains, and meanders and oxbows has effectively narrowed and sped up the water flows, while also shortening, i.e., both length and water time in river/land, largely because meandering, longer natural rivers are also flatter, i.e., the same elevation gain/drop over 30% more length and they are wider, i.e., the past volume of greater water stored itself in gravel "batteries" (hence where Kiesgruben" come from which fill into a Baggersee) and left by glaciers a very long time ago. It's really not all that complicated when you realize what I am saying and it just seems to proximal for Europeans for some reason, i.e., they don't really seem to have a sense for how things were in the past, based on my experience talking to them, i.e., they think the rivers they have have always been more or less the way they currently are even if they are maybe manicured with banks or something. For additional context; the Rhein was up to 30 times wider than it is today before being straightened. Here's a decent illustration of that [1] which shows not only how the river was straightened from the meandering oxbow river into the straight red river, but also notice that all of the green area is the historical path of the river and the flood plains it produced which would have been fed by all those meandering oxbows. All of that is now gone with the drainage of Europe having been completed over about 200 years now. It's really not all that different in the USA either in case you were wondering, but e.g., the Mississippi has only been straightened since the 1930s and is still very much not really fully controlled even though the straightening along with deforestation and soil erosion has also led to the USA being essentially drained. And here too, people are wondering why it's getting dryer more. We have similarly also chocked our country full of way more people that can sustainably be supported in an ecologically sound manner, but liberals and conservatives have one thing in common, they slap the roof of the car and proclaim "this bad boy can fit so many f--king people in it." out of a toxic combination of lust for power, decadence, entitlement, and greed. [1] https://eucorkarten.ub.uni-freiburg.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/H_Gemarkung_Rheinstrom-72.jpg https://eucorkarten.ub.uni-freiburg.de/wp-content/uploads/20...