NEWS FLASH

Army Corps Admits Their ’500-Year Flood’ Standard Is Meaningless | The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has calculated this year’s flood of the Missouri River as a 500-year runoff season, after a supposed 200-year flood in 1997. “It doesn’t mean it can’t happen again next year,” Jody Farhat, chief of water management for the Omaha district of the corps, told the Omaha World-Herald. “It’s not 2512 the next time we get an event like this. [...] We feel it is a rare event and the chance of getting another…next year is very remote.” “Over the past 50 years, three seasons of remarkably high runoff — 1978, 1997 and this year — have changed the corps’ analyses of flood frequency,” said Monique Farmer, a corps spokeswoman. Tea Party Republicans want to forbid the Corps from using climate science to inform their flood planning.