Rock Doc

You have certainly done business on them, and you may well have lived within their boundaries. Whether you recognize it or not, and whether you are reading this in the desert West or the soggier regions of the country, floodplains are a part of the landscape around you – and they can be highly dangerous places to be.

A floodplain is the flat part of the Earth beside and around a river. It’s also the place we like to build houses and schools and stores because it’s easier to build on flat ground rather than a steep hillside. Especially in the old days, when materials came by boat to a town, or...