Midwestern Towns Prepare to Navigate More Flooding (and a Climate-Denying President)
As mayors from towns along the Mississippi River huddled over their phones on March 22nd, they cautiously awaited answers from members of the National Weather Service and emergency agencies across the federal government: “How bad is the flooding going to be? And what can we do to stop it?”
Flooding devastated the central part of the country in mid-March, evacuating towns and killing three in Nebraska, which already faces $1.3 billion in damages from the swelling Missouri River. Other states, like Illinois and South Dakota, are facing evacuations ahead of more floods. In Missouri, the St. Louis area is fearing a repeat of 1993, when historic floods killed 50 people. Since 2011, St. Louis has experienced “once-in-a-lifetime” flood events on three separate occasions.
“It was like being in a giant situation room,” says Colin Wellenkamp, the executive director of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative (MRCTI), a group of 88 mayors from 10 states along the river working to better prepare for flooding, which been hitting the Midwest with more frequency and magnitude in recent years. The group traveled to Washington, D.C., last month to ask the federal government for $7.86 billion to reinforce infrastructure along the Mississippi, and it helped organize the late-March phone call that brought the mayors together with state legislators, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Army Corps of Engineers and more to discuss strategies for what looks to be a disastrous flooding season.
“We have just been pulverized by unprecedented events,” says Wellenkamp, who lives in the St. Louis suburb of St. Charles. “Events that used to be on the 100-to-200 or 500-year scale are now back-to-back, one right after the other.”
Forecasters warn the worst may be yet to come this spring, due to record-setting snowfall in the upper Midwest this winter. While the winter snow melts into the Mississippi River, heavy rainfall in the coming months could create mass flooding.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/midwestern-towns-prepare-to-navigate-more-flooding-and-a-climate-denying-president-817795/
