FLOODS: Winning Against Water

Enthusiastic about the success of huge, man-made walls in holding back nature's temperamental floods, an Army Corps of Engineers official said of the flood-control system on the Mississippi River: "It's the greatest invention since women." Though his statement was exaggerated, his pride was justified. In the third worst flood of the century, federally financed dams, levees and spillways last week met severe tests, regulated the swelling river and in seven Mississippi Valley states* kept damage to a relatively low $200 million.

Still, the river's rising waters took their toll. By week's end the flood had...

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