How a river town relocated, with climate lessons for today

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File–A residential street is filled with single-story homes all built around the same time in Valmeyer, Illinois. This small town was overwhelmed by a 100-year flood event in 1993. Townspeople wanted to stay together and decided to move their town 2 miles away and about 400 feet up. The land for the new town was purchased from a dairy farm.

July 15, 2021

By Doug Struck Correspondent

VALMEYER, ILL.

It was 1:30 a.m. Dennis Knobloch stood at the top of a hillside cemetery – “that cemetery right there,” he says, pointing over his shoulder. The water was coming. He and others from the town had worked for weeks, sandbagging levees, bulldozing rock and rubble, to try to hold the swelling river. They had failed. His radio crackled: The last levee was gone.

“It’s your call, mayor,” the utility chief said.

Mr. Knobloch gave the order: Cut the power. He watched as the town below him – his town – flickered to dark, street by street, engulfed by the night and the Mississippi River.

To read full story, go to: Christian Science Monitor