"As several rivers across Midwest and Great Plains are set to crest, a federal judge in Cape Girardeau, Mo., has given the US Army Corps of Engineers the green light to blast openings in a levee along the Mississippi River to ease the flood risk to cities and towns downstream.
The approach highlights a tool that hydrologists and environmental groups have advocated for years to reduce long-term flood risks: removing levees at strategic locations to allow floodwaters to spread into a river's flood plain.
It's a strategy being adopted elsewhere, notably in the Netherlands. Its advocates say it not only relieves stress on the remaining levees by lowering flood heights upstream and downstream, but it could also reduce the amount of soil and nutrients spring floods flush into the Gulf of Mexico. Researchers point to the nutrient runoff as the culprit behind a dead zone that builds each year off the Louisiana coast. Full Article
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