Flood thy neighbor: Who stays dry and who decides?

costs billions to maintain and keeps getting hit by natural disasters.

There is no indication it will get more support under the Trump administration. Small-government advocates long have called for removing civil works from the Corps, and in June, the administration released a plan that would do just that: Strip the Corps of its flood control responsibilities and reassign the job to the Department of Transportation and Department of the Interior. A shift like that would add a new layer of uncertainty to the Corps’ future.

Flood victims around Valley Park don’t have the luxury of waiting for a government fix.

Last year, Walt Wolfner tore down the half-century-old clubhouse that took on 11 feet of water in the 2015 flood. In its footprint, he built a new one, accessible by stairs and an elevator, 14 feet above the ground.

“You’re on your own,” Wolfner said. “It’s every man for himself.”

Sarah Quinn moved away from Arnold after the 2017 flood, but she often visits her grandmother at the Starling Community Trailer Court.

“Anytime we’re together in the car driving over the bridge, I see her peering over the river,” Quinn said. “If it rains too much, she’ll go back into the woods and check the creek. She will not admit that she’s nervous, but she does not want to go through it again. I don’t think anybody would.”

Four months after the 2015 flood, Devin Brundick and Felicia Ammann set about elevating their home in Pacific. They had an 8-foot concrete foundation poured, then had a crane pick up their little green house and set it on top. It was another year before they could move back in. Brundick is a carpenter, and when he has time at home, he works on finishing repairs.

“We’ve got a slop sink in our kitchen and I got a bunch of wire shelving for storage space, so that’s pretty rough,” Brundick said. “Most people, I don’t think, would feel like they’re actually in a house. We just call it glamping.”

The way this area has flooded since they bought the house, Brundick and Ammann doubt they’ll make money selling the home the way they’d planned — even from its new perch.

Their corner of town is full of signs of how other people are making their own plans to weather the future: old homes parked high up on fresh concrete foundations and others sitting low to the ground, newly abandoned.

Lisa Song reports on the environment, energy and climate change for ProPublica. Patrick Michels is a reporter covering immigration and disaster planning for Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. Al Shaw is a news applications developer at ProPublica. This story was originally published by ProPublica.