The River Floyd and the EPA

It was, we thought, a perfect place to rent. We'd sold our old middle-of-town house in the twinkling of an eye and found ourselves homeless first crack out of the box after retiring. We'd told ourselves we weren't going to move to another century-old place, but the farm house was likely older than the place where we'd lived, where we'd raised our family.

But it had a river. And trees. And it wasn't far at all from a real woods with walking paths. I joked I could fish out the back window--a bit of a stretch, but not much. And the rent--my word!--was to die for. We had a year-and-a-half until the owner wanted to move from Colorado and live there himself--a year-and-a-half to determine where we'd live whatever time God had up his sleeve for an older couple.

That first year the rains came somewhere northeast of here while we were gone. Happened early, Memorial Day weekend, while we were gone; but our son-in-law drove out to check the place out, found the river waaaaaay up. In 2013, late May, the flood went 19 feet above flood stage, highest ever. While it didn't rise out of its banks behind the farm house, it certainly did elsewhere. Wasn't pretty. It came up in the basement, but it didn't swarm the yard. 

Record-breaker, locals said, a sure thing, 100-year flood. 

We smiled. We were renters anyway, but we were sure high water wasn't going to be a scare for the rest of our stay, and we were right.

When the neighbors told us they'd sell us a lot, we went for it, a couple of unhandy folks who'd never dreamed about a dream house. But we loved the area: there was the river, after all, and we were out in the country in the company of big skies. 

Two years later, one year into the new house, the rains came again, in torrents, and the Floyd River, named by Lewis and Clark after a fallen sergeant, rose once more, this time to 17 feet. "Amazing," locals said, "we just had another 100-year flood."

That year, it climbed up to the edge of our property. For the first time in our lives, we owned a lake home. At night, the lights from the farm across the river cut white lines all the way across the water. It was kind of cool, kind of exciting. 

A month or so ago now, we were in Sioux City. Rains had been forecast, and rains had been falling; but when we left, the river was peaceable. We weren't thinking flood. 

Our neighbors called just as we left the city, asked if we wanted them to check our sump pump. We were embarrassed. We didn't have one. "Might not be a bad idea for you to pick one up in LeMars," they said. We did.

This time, the river helped itself to a good chunk of the back yard. The neighborhood crawled with people here to sandbag at the neighbors'. Things weren't looking good. We installed the sump pump, and I walked out back, marked the edge of the flood, and waited. 



But the river never got any higher, but whoever makes such calls claimed that at its crest, the Floyd was 21 feet above flood stage, two feet higher than the record established just five years ago. I cleaned up a lot of scum--corn stalks and cobs left behind from who knows how many fields upstream--but we were never in real trouble. Our neighbors had it far worse.

Three hundred-year floods in five years. That's the tally. 

"Scientists’ worst predictions have come true, from the lethal heat wave gripping Japan to the record temperatures in Europe to the flames exploding near the Arctic Circle," said the Sacramento Bee. They didn't include the lowly Floyd way up in our backyard, but they could have.

Residents of Redding, California, had never panicked about fire. After all, there was always a river between them and the fires that raged in the hills. Those fires had never jumped that river. A week ago, they did.  

This page is being updated.

Thank you for your interest in this topic. We are currently updating our website to reflect EPA's priorities under the leadership of President Trump and Administrator Pruitt.

Look for yourself. Here's what greets you if you visit the climate change page on the site of the our nation's Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt is gone, but nothing changed here for more than a year because under Trump the soul of America is big business whose lifeblood is big oil. 

If even using the phrase, "climate change" is political, can we at least all agree that the climate is changing? And can we talk about it?