Rethinking Flood Control
The record flood rolling down the Mississippi River is prompting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to activate a decades-old flood plan that so far has prevented a catastrophic levee breach—but not without a price.
Fifteen years after the Great Flood of 1993, floodplain development is booming
Once it was a cornfield; now it’s a Wal-Mart, a Taco Bell, a Target. Here along a stretch of Missouri’s Highway 40, in the Chesterfield Valley area just west of downtown St. Louis, what’s said to be the largest strip mall in the country sits on about 46 acres of Mississippi River bottomlands. Less than 20 years ago, the land was open space.