For 100+ years, the Army Corps of Engineers built levees to keep water out of communities and farms. Here's how that works — and how it can make flooding worse:
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In the 1920s, they set aside 130,000 acres in Missouri as a floodway — farmland that was designed to flood to save a city across the river.
It looked good on paper, but…
And that city, Cairo, Illinois, had fallen into poverty, and was 70% black.
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Their congresswoman wrote to President Obama. They met with Corps leaders, and the Missouri AG sued (but lost).
In the end the Corps opened the floodway.
For them it was a lose-lose situation.
But they only work if used correctly.
The Corps had a chance to buy all the land in the floodway in the 1990s, but decided it was too expensive.