The Economist - UK (2019-06-01)

TheEconomistJune 1st 2019 33

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our generationsof one family run

Riverdock Restaurant in Hardin, a small

town on a spit of wooded land between the

swollen Illinois and Mississippi rivers. The

matriarch is Sara Heffington, in red t-shirt

and jeans. She says the Illinois river usually

passes 400 feet (120 metres) from the long,

ground-floor room where they serve bis-

cuits and sausage gravy. Today water laps at

the front door. She recalls a previous del-

uge, as they prepared to open in 1993. Back

then, a levee broke and neck-high, muddy

water submerged them. “That was a one-

in-500-year flood,” she says.

In years when lots of snow melts up-

stream or increasingly stormy spring rain

overfills midwestern rivers, the Heffing-

tons get gravel from a nearby quarry, fill

bags and build a defensive wall. At the mo-

ment an oozing white barrier again sur-

rounds their restaurant as diesel-pumps

spit defiant jets back towards the river.

They just about keep nature at bay, even

as a fast-moving torrent almost wets the

roadway on Hardin’s green metal bridge.

When that closed, 26 years ago, the town

was all but cut off for five months. The Illi-

nois is likely to crest again next week, at al-

most the same high level. “It’s starting to

scare us,” admits Mrs Heffington.

Asked why a one-in-500-year flood is

back so soon, she first blames a recent lack

of dredging and then talks of “extraordi-

nary rains up north”. She sees a long-term

“cycle” as the climate changes, but “the

Lord has a plan”, and she doubts people af-

fect the weather much. The youngest wait-

ress, Skylar Giberson, disagrees with her

older relative. Denial won’t do, she says.

Humans and carbon emissions are chang-

ing the climate permanently. Her plan?

“We should just move.”

Ms Giberson, just out of high school,

may be proved right. America has just

notched up its wettest 12 months ever, and

floods are worsening across the Midwest.

In the past century annual precipitation

has risen by 10% across the region, a faster

increase than for America as a whole. The

Great Lakes region heated up by an average

of 0.9 degrees Celsius (1.6 Fahrenheit) in

the 115 years to 2016, concluded scientists

from the region in a report in March. That

was also faster than the national trend.

Because warmer air holds more mois-

ture (and can suddenly release it), precipi-

tation will keep rising. A 30% increase in

the region is possible this century if global

carbon emissions go unchecked, according

to the federal agencies who produced the

National Climate Assessment (nca) late

last year. This warned that more winter and

spring downpours will mean more sodden

soil, leaching of nutrients and delays to

farmers’ planting season.

Robert Criss, a hydrogeologist at Wash-

ington University in St Louis, says rain

bursts are most destructive and can “go cra-

zy” in smaller river basins. But even huge

rivers like the Mississippi can struggle with

higher overall flows. Decades of building

levees close to rivers has narrowed them,

blocked flood plains and lifted water. No

Climate change and the Midwest

Soaked and less sceptical

HARDIN, ILLINOIS

Floods and storms are altering inland America’s attitude to climate change

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