Word: townes
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...failing to adhere to guidelines intended to mitigate risk of flood damage. Among the guidelines: newly constructed buildings, and some existing ones undergoing significant upgrades, had to be raised some 12 feet. That's partly because major floods were projected to send at least 10 feet of water into town. Federal authorities imposed a $25 surcharge on residents' insurance policies, hoping it would pressure elected officials to comply with the guidelines...
...recent humid afternoon, Jack "Whitey" Knupp stood atop Grand Tower's levee, surveying the Mississippi. The portly 73-year-old with ruddy cheeks and a shock of silver hair spent much of his life steering barges along the river. Indeed, for years, the river produced the drama in this town's life. Pirates escaping the colonial Spaniards were among the area's first residents. Legend has it that Mark Twain frequently landed here to unload freight. Many of Grand Tower's sons took to the river's barges, hoping to escape into a relatively middle-class existence, and glimpse life...
Local government, however, refused. "We're a town that's just barely getting by and can't afford to fix all those violations," says Mayor Ellett. Nevertheless, in June 1991, FEMA suspended Grand Tower from the insurance program altogether. "Taxpayers will not be called upon to put money back into a flood area if the community hasn't done its part by enforcing the ordinance," says David Schein, FEMA's senior flood-plain-management specialist. That essentially means the only assistance the Federal Government is likely to provide is temporary shelter and food. "That's really humanitarian," snaps Ellett...
...shelter, Utopia Ranch, we have a lot of large, black, indiscriminate-looking dogs," says Kinky Friedman, the Texas musician, author and onetime gubernatorial candidate. In the eight years since his South Texas rescue ranch has been operating, a majority of the dogs left at the gate or rescued from town shelters are black, Friedman says, and a look at the ranch website confirms that view. There are two unwanted black mutts that have been given the supermodel names Christy Brinkley and Bridgett Bardot by Friedman's cousin Nancy Parker-Simons, who with her husband runs the rescue operation. And there...
...organizing neighborhoods by occupation confined to the poor. Even a handful of the more prosperous residents of India's modern cities have for years lived in neighborhoods composed on clearly discernible occupational lines - doctors, town planners, academics, journalists, lawyers, government bureaucrats and diplomats all living among their own. Most such neighborhoods have their roots in a decades-old government housing program that sells public land at below-market prices to cooperative societies, many of which are based on their members' occupation...