The farm land is a flood plain. That’s where the water wants to go. The building of almost continuous levees traps the water and makes the situation worse. Winnipeg, for example, built a flood control channel that diverts and significant portion of the water around the city, essentially decreasing the height of the water by increasing the size of the river with a new channel. Of course, they just need to g0 the short distance to Lake Winnipeg.

We would need to build a dry lake that we could fill during the floods to reduce the height, or let it flow into the traditional flood plain.

The problem this year is that both the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers are flooding. so you have flood waters from both rivers combining at Cairo and heading South.

Remind me: how often does a 100-year flood event happen these days? How long has it been since we saw 10 years without such an event?

Forgive my cynicism. I live in a flood-prone area, in an era in which shit like T.S. Allison happens with IMHO totally ineffective government response. Maybe things have gotten to a point at which, quite literally, nothing can be done. But one does wonder.