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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Mighty Mississippi, Big Muddy Top Endangered-Rivers List

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Tuesday, April 14, 2020   

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The "Mighty Mississippi" and "Big Muddy" are the backbone of many Missouri communities, and a new report warns these two big rivers are at a major crossroads.

The upper Mississippi and lower Missouri are ranked by American Rivers as the country's top two "most endangered rivers." Olivia Dorothy, director for the Upper Mississippi Basin with the organization, said increasingly severe flooding spurred by climate change threatens both waterways.

"We highlight these rivers to help inspire communities to take action to improve those river systems," Dorothy said. "Each river system has a critical decision point that will either damage the river in the long term or help it."

The report noted that 2019 flooding caused more than $6 billion in damages and left communities under water for weeks, and some for many months. Dorothy said river-management decisions that allow higher levees and risky floodplain development will only exacerbate such threats in the future.

For the Upper Mississippi, the report calls for a basin-wide water-management framework to reduce current flood management inconsistencies between individual communities and states.

For the Lower Missouri, Dorothy said officials should move away from maintaining the antiquated levee system and policies that favor rebuilding to pre-flood condition.

"We have to look at that as more of a permanent shift in the way the river is going to use the flood plain, as opposed to a temporary situation, which is kind of how we've viewed floods in the past as this very brief battle that has to be fought, year after year," she said.

Dorothy argued state and local governments should commit to nature-based solutions, including levee setbacks and floodplain restoration.

"Instead of just relying on what we did a century ago, we really need to make sure that we are looking toward the future," she said; "focusing on things that restore the environment as well as put people to work instead of building more dams and building more flood-control projects."

She added that with the COVID-19 crisis stretching resources for communities along the two big rivers, governors should request special mission assignments for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to support contagion control around flood-fighting efforts.

Disclosure: American Rivers contributes to our fund for reporting on Climate Change/Air Quality, Environment, Salmon Recovery, Water. If you would like to help support news in the public interest, click here.


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