Could it flood?

It's hard to wrap my brain around the thought that the Green River could flood my town. But problems at the flood control dam up in the mountains have everyone very concerned. The Army Corps of Engineers is working on repairs, but in the meantime, everyone in the valley is building defenses. At lunch today I wandered down to the river for a look at the walls going up along the dike.

Other than minor flooding from time to time, this river hasn't flooded since I was a kid, before the dam was built. Back then, the river flooded every year. Farmers in the valley owned rowboats for getting around during the rainy season. Kids missed school, because the buses couldn't pick them up. We lived on the hills, so floods to us were more a novelty than a life-changing event.