U.S. floods and their management

My earliest knowledge about floods was gained as a ‘tad’ in Sunday school. There I learned that a flood some 4500 years ago covered all the earth. Recently, I realized that Noah must have been the world's best floodplain manager of all time. He had warning enough to build an ark. Soon after that lesson in Sunday school, probably in grammar school, I learned that floods were good. Their springtime overflow brought necessary fertility on floodplains to grow needed summer crops for food. I heard this same theory advanced just last year in a. sound motion picture, ‘Planning for Floods,’ produced by the Environmental Defense Fund, Incorporated. Counter theory argues that floodplain overflow merely moves fertility from upstream to downstream and lavishes abundant weed seeds upon the floodplains at both locations.