They paved the river and put in a parking lot?

I'm no meteorologist, but ...

5 observations from the Great Midwest Flood of '08:

• "With that volume of rain, you're going to have flooding, said Donna Dubberke, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "This is not just because someone put in a parking lot."
  
• Elwynn Taylor, a meteorologist at Iowa State University attributes the flooding in recent years to cyclical climate change.
  
• "We've lost 90 percent of our wetlands," said Mary Skopec, who monitors water quality for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
  
• Crop rotation may also play a subtle role in the flooding. Farmers who may have once grown a number of crops are now likely to stick to just corn and soybeans -- annual plants that don't put down deep roots.
• "Cities routinely build in the flood plain," said Kamyar Enshayan, director of an environmental center at the University of Northern Iowa. "That's not an act of God; that's an act of City Council."

Iowa Flooding Could Be An Act of Man, Experts Say
By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 19, 2008; Page A01

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