Flooding in Missouri Raises Vexing Questions
” *** many people in this part of the Mississippi River basin near St. Louis have come to accept that flooding is a part of life. But the damage this time has been so severe and the river levels so high that vexing questions have again been raised about whether anything can be done to truly ease the threat of the volatile and unpredictable rivers around here.”
Can greater defenses be erected? Should homes be vaulted on stilts? Or is it time for some communities to pack up and leave?
Update on Jan. 4: See this account of Human Causes of MO Flooding.
Recovery Diva 
In a galaxy long long ago I was quoted in the St. Louis Times Dispatch as the General Counsel of the then independent Executive Branch agency nicknamed FEMA. I was not then and never was the GC of that FEMA although it might have been a far different agency if I was. Then Senator Tom Eagleton led the drive to eliminate an important sanction in the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 as amended by the Flood Disaster protection Act of 1973 effective as of December 31, 1973. Fully effective one year after an area mapped by the NFIP then housed in HUD. The year was 1977.
The quote was the following: The General Counsel of FEMA stated on the record that building on the river side of any river or streamflow unmapped YET by the NFIP made no engineering or common sense standard, but because enforcement of floodplain management was triggered only by detailed mapping such building was not in violation of the NFIP.
Knowing full well that areas that were floodprone should not be developed many communities , knowing full well that nmmaps would be developled under the NFIP. often allowed full subdivisions to be built on the river side of levees. ‘this negligenc, perhaps, gross negligence, and history should be looked at closely the the Missouri Attorney General NOW!