Article Source: msnbc.com
from:msnbc.comAs the Red River slowly starts to recede, Fargo residents are left to deal with another problem: environmental hazards that linger long after the waters decline.
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Whew, Constant worry for those residents! I would think about relocating as this has happened quite often there.
You're darn tootin'...
Why do people seem determined to build their homes so they can be destroyed by normal conditions? That river floods every year as the snow melts and it floods the river bottoms. Build away from it and leave that land as farmland!
Oh Gavin, you are exagerating. We do not have major floods every year. This is extremely unusual. Especially twice in a row. People can no longer build within the flood plane. There's two problems though 1) Many of those people bought houses 20+ years ago and had no idea the river would ever get this high (again this is very unusual) so what do we do with people who already live along the river? and 2) The Fema Flood maps were redrawn so people who thought they built outside of the flood plane are now kind of screwed. Fargo is one of the flattest places on Earth and the ground is the bottom of a glacial lake. It's very fertile but it's almost like pottery clay. The water doesn't drain like most places. Someone explained it best as spilling a glass of water on a table, you never know where it's going to go.
But to be fair Gavin the flooding doesn't usually reach the levels that it did this year or the previous year. Most of the time the flooding is harmless for the towns on the river.