Word: floodplains
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...long after floodwaters have crested will play host to a chocolate-colored inland sea sprawling across the spine of the Midwest -- a stagnant, festering stew of industrial waste, agricultural pesticides and raw sewage that laminates buildings in goo and provides a superb growing environment for bacteria. The entire floodplain, says Anita Walker in Des Moines, Iowa, will be a "muddy, stinky, awful mess to clean...
...protect the communities that sprang up on the river's edge, and most of the time it has. But many environmentalists believe that, over the years, the corps's attempts to control the Mississippi have backfired. Left to its own devices, a flooding river spreads horizontally, filling its natural floodplain and enriching it with fertile, alluvial soil. Along the Mississippi, however, this pattern of natural flow has been increasingly blocked by a patchwork of levees...
Also working in the Pantanal's favor is the inaccessibility of the central core of the huge floodplain. The enormous, uninhabited wetlands provide a refuge where animals can retreat from hunting and other human intrusions. Munn notes that the area has survived deforestation in large sections of its watershed and that the effects of industrialization in the surrounding states have so far been minimal. "If this glass is half empty," he says, surveying the wild diversity of wading birds, flycatchers and kingfishers feeding at the flooded edge of a pasture, "I can't imagine what it would look like full...
...other water is there on top of it," observes Fred Liscum, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. Levees built to protect towns can also restrict river flow, which in turn can force the waterway to crest and wash out the barriers on either bank. Says Robert Cox, Louisiana floodplain administrator: "You don't get rid of the water; you just pass it on downstream to the next...