Photo by Robert Barossi

by Robert Barossi

On the radio this morning, there was a conversation about potential flooding in the middle of the United States, especially places like Nebraska and Iowa. There are a number of things that can go wrong for our rivers and flooding is just one of them, but it’s one that people don’t often think about until it happens to their own river, in their own backyard. It’s often, if not always, volunteers who are doing the work to lessen the impact of floods, piling sandbags along a riverbank, for example. Volunteers are also the ones who go back to the river after the floods recede, picking up the trash and debris left behind. Here’s one such story, from the Little Thompson River in Colorado. A similar article from a local news station describes how the Little Thompson River Corridor was ravaged by floods in 2013 and how volunteers now work to repair the damage.