Critics of the new river-restoration plan have argued that returning the channel to its meandering pre-dam course would flood valuable farmland. The plan's chief engineer does not dispute that some acreage would be lost. Instead, she points out that the straightened channel, by speeding water downstream, has steadily eroded the very banks the farmers now depend upon, so that each decade the river claims a little more land than the restoration would surrender at once. The choice, she insists, is not between losing land and keeping it, but between losing it gradually and invisibly or losing a known amount now in exchange for a stable bank thereafter.