[sportutegrl]

Why are people allowed to build homes and farm in a natural floodplain? If they do it should be entirely at their own risk. This same area flooded in 1927 when the (known) high water mark was set. Big floods happen on a regular basis but people have short memories.

It makes no sense at all to farm the blackest soil in the world, especially when it floods two or three times a century. It would probably make much more sense to build cities in that lowland instead.

[Bernard Marx]

It would probably make much more sense to build cities in that lowland instead.

You inverted my comment.

The Egyptians have prospered for millennia farming rich soils created by Nile floods. I see no problem with farming the blackest soil in the world so long as the farmers take the sole risk of financial damages from flooding and don't beg for federal bail-outs. Maybe they should self-insure with a "flood tax" in the profitable fat years to offset their inevitable flood losses.