Let's get real - at least a little

First, I'll set up the straw man - that floods are due to Global Warming

Iowa Flooding - Global Warming Increases Frequency of Extreme Weather - Mississippi River Flooding - thedailygreen.com:

"What the Mississippi River Flood Tells Us About Global Warming...

The slug of slow-moving destruction that is making its way from Iowa down the Mississippi River Valley is extraordinary by any measure.

That the last flood of this magnitude occurred just 15 years ago should be cause for concern.

Floods happen. Big floods happen. Epic floods happen.

But they don't happen all the time. Scientists talk about the 100 Year Flood, and the 500 Year Flood. These are floods of such magnitude they could be expected to occur every 100 years, or every 500 years. Infrequently, in other words.

In Iowa, and on down the Mississippi River, that once-a-century event has happened twice in the life of some teenagers"

But let's take some things into consideration

Like ... It's called a Flood Plain!
F-L-O-O-D
Why oh why would those that choose to build and live on a flood plain expect anything but floods.

Our house in the Lansing area is sited next to Sycamore Creek, which floods
But, our house is built into the bank, on the high ground and across the creek is a 30 to 40 acre flood plain. When the creek rises, as it clears the bank, it ... floods the flood plain, and stops rising.

But let's continue.

Parts of the flood plain (Mississippi and others) have been engineered to not serve their natural purpose.

Iowa Flooding Could Be An Act of Man, Experts Say - washingtonpost.com:

"Enshayan, director of an environmental center at the University of Northern Iowa, suspects that this natural disaster wasn't really all that natural. He points out that the heavy rains fell on a landscape radically reengineered by humans. Plowed fields have replaced tallgrass prairies. Fields have been meticulously drained with underground pipes. Streams and creeks have been straightened. Most of the wetlands are gone. Flood plains have been filled and developed.

'We've done numerous things to the landscape that took away these water-absorbing functions,' he said. 'Agriculture must respect the limits of nature.'"


And there is the question of the levee's
Midwest floods expose outdated levee systems - USATODAY.com:

"At least half of the 31 levees already breached or topped between southern Iowa and St. Louis were not built to handle a flood of such historic proportions, according to a USA TODAY review of data from the Army Corps of Engineers. Many of those were built at least 30 years ago, and some date to the 1940s.

As riverside development has boomed, 'levees built 50 years ago for agricultural purposes are often now asked to do the work of a residential or urban levee,' says Eric Halpin, a corps special assistant for dam and levee safety. The floods 'show a need for more robust and resilient levee systems.'"

But note - other levee's have been build, increasing the load on earlier structures

When the Levee Breaks: Is the Culprit Rain--Or Overdevelopment?: Scientific American:

"Efforts to carve a controlled channel for the Missouri, Mississippi and their tributary rivers also contributed to the problem. The reason: the Mississippi now flows through a conduit roughly half the width of its channel that existed before most of the levees were built, which means more water passes faster through a narrower area. 'Channeling the river means you are going to have higher crests in the river,' Corley notes, that are sometimes higher than the levees built previously to contain them."

The following is from May 17th ... 2007

Development Rises on St. Louis Area Flood Plains - New York Times:

"About 28,000 homes have been built and more than 6,000 acres of commercial and industrial space developed on land that was underwater in 1993, according to research by Nicholas Pinter, a geologist who studies the region at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

Building is happening on flood plains across Missouri, but most of the development is in the St. Louis area, and it is estimated to be worth more than $2.2 billion. Though scientists warn about the danger of such building, the Missouri government has subsidized some of it through tax financing for builders.

“No one has really looked at the cumulative effect,” said Timothy M. Kusky, a professor of natural sciences at St. Louis University, who calculates that there has been more development on the Missouri River flood plain in the years since 1993 than at any other time in the history of the region."


Maybe we should consider that it's not good to fool with Mother Nature
CO2 and other factors may be affecting climate change, but it's more obvious that drainage, channeling (higher levees) of rivers add a great deal to the problem.

As for development on flood plains - it should not be permitted.
And I think its an abomination that such development qualifies for "National Flood Insurance."