Flood thy neighbor: Who stays dry and who decides?

in the long run, but which the Corps concluded were “seldom economically justified.”

The Corps has used some version of these formulas along the Meramec since at least 1929, when it decided a reservoir held behind a dam was the best solution for controlling the wild, free-flowing river. Unlike a levee, which could push water into nearby towns, a reservoir would act as a valve, releasing water from the dam during droughts and storing extra water during floods. The plan might have eliminated flooding for everyone along 33 miles of the Lower Meramec, from the mouth of the river to the city of Eureka, 12 miles upstream of Valley Park. But for decades, the Corps’ math said the land that would be protected wasn’t valuable enough to justify the cost of building a dam.

By the 1960s, the area’s population had grown large enough for the Corps to reconsider the reservoir. But by then, the plan had attracted opposition from special interests, including business owners around a nearby lake who didn’t want to compete for tourists and environmentalists who believed rivers ought to flow freely. Jimmy Carter campaigned for the presidency with a promise to block big, wasteful federal water projects. The Meramec dam was among the targets of a 1977 “hit list” he released as president.

The fate of the reservoir was put to a rare public referendum among voters in St. Louis and a dozen counties along the Meramec in 1978. The Corps already had bought thousands of acres and started building a visitor center when the vote showed that nearly two-thirds opposed the project. Congress formally deauthorized the reservoir in 1981.

The following year, the Meramec unleashed one of its worst floods on record, rising so suddenly that first responders rescued residents in the dark as the river inundated Valley Park. The flooding killed six people and caused more than $100 million in damage. In the small community of Times Beach, residents cleared out, abandoning that land to the river.

At the time, Walt Wolfner was in high school and already the manager of his father’s golf course in