As a new flood season approaches, many Americans remain haunted by the last. Families across the country are still in mourning months after the waters receded from places like the Texas Hill Country, where a flash flood on the Guadalupe River in July left at least 135 people dead, many of them children.
There is a way for communities to prepare for future floods and try to limit their damage. The producer Jillian Weinberger went to a small town in Iowa to meet a mayor who discovered how effective one solution can be in a crisis. As the Trump administration leaves communities to fend for themselves, one state has a model that could help us all as the waters rise.
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The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
David Leonhardt: I’m David Leonhardt, of New York Times Opinion. I work on our editorial board, where we spend a lot of time talking about the country’s biggest challenges.
Last summer, one of my colleagues became a little obsessed with one problem in particular: flash flooding. Climate change is increasing the number of floods — just as President Trump is cutting government programs that help communities deal with those floods.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Even if Trump doesn’t undo his cuts — and he should — my colleague Jillian Weinberger set out to find out whether other people can make a difference in the meantime. And she discovered that the answer is yes. She found a place that has taken steps to save money and, more importantly, save lives.
Jillian found a rare thing in America in 2026: an inspiring story about the government doing something right.
Jillian Weinberger: The story begins in Riverdale, Iowa. It’s home to just 550 people — and at least one deer.
Audio clip of Weinberger: I am standing in front of the city hall. Just in front of me is a deer. Hi!
She watched me make my way into City Council chambers, where I met Riverdale’s mayor, Anthony Heddlesten.
Audio clip of Weinberger: Hi. Hello.
Audio clip of Heddlesten: Welcome to Riverdale.
Audio clip of Weinberger: Thank you so much.
Mayor Heddlesten has long sideburns and a mustache that curls around the corners of his mouth. The day we met, he was wearing his patriotic glasses, emblazoned with the American flag.
Audio clip of Weinberger: Are your eyeglasses, is it the red, white, and blue? Are they — oh, wow. They’re magnetic.
Audio clip of Heddlesten: So, they’re the — yeah — the eyeglasses that you can swap out.
I wanted to meet Mayor Heddlesten to hear about a harrowing stormy night last summer. The rain had started coming down that afternoon.
Audio clip of Heddlesten: I am hoping to have a nice, relaxing, calm evening and take the edge off, watch some TV, whatever. I had made myself a brandy old-fashioned.
Anthony soon realized that the rain was coming down pretty hard.
News clip: Flooding, a high possibility with these storms coming in this afternoon into the evening.
This was a week after the deadly flash floods in central Texas — the ones that hit Camp Mystic. Riverdale is also at high risk for floods. It sits at the confluence of two bodies of water, the Mississippi River and Duck Creek.
Audio clip of Heddlesten: We have more time to prepare on the Mississippi — usually days, at least, if not weeks, to prepare for whatever’s coming. Duck Creek’s a much flashier stream, so you’ve got hours to figure it out.
Because Riverdale is such a small town, Anthony serves as mayor only part time. In his day job, he’s a civil engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. And he’s kind of a weather nerd — he’s got a whole weather station set up at his house.
[SOUND OF ALARM BEEPING]
Audio clip of Heddlesten: It sets off an alarm if it gets too high of a rainfall rate. So, it’s going off in the background. All the cues are telling me something’s going to go south here in my evening, right?
Clip of weather radio: Flash flood warning remains in effect until 9 p.m. this evening for southern Scott and Rock Island Counties.
Until recently, Mayor Heddlesten had help in situations like these, from the federal government. The feds ran a gauge on Duck Creek — a little brick house with a sensor inside. It measured the height of the creek and posted the information online. Local officials would use that information to make decisions about evacuations during storms.
But the mayor no longer had that crucial service at his disposal — in part because of President Trump and Elon Musk.
To understand how all of this unfolded, we have to rewind a few months, from July back to May. That’s when the mayor went to check the height of the creek online.
Audio clip of Heddlesten: It said: “This gauge has been discontinued. Please email Gary Johnson if you’d like to ask any questions.” And I was like, oh, wonderful. I know Gary Johnson from work.
Gary worked for the federal agency that runs the gauges. The mayor had met him through his day job.
Audio clip of Heddlesten: I was like, I’ll just call him up. And I type an email: “Hey, Gary, how’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in a while. Hope everything’s great. What’s going on with this gauge?” And I immediately got a response back, and it said: “Hey, this is Gary Johnson. I’ve taken the deferred resignation program and I’m not available to help you.” And I was like, oh my goodness.
Deferred resignation is what the Trump administration offered tens of thousands of federal employees last year. It allowed them to stop working but continue getting paid for a few months, while they looked for a new job. Gary Johnson had taken the feds up on the offer.
So, back in May, the mayor asked around to see what was going on with the gauge. He discovered that the feds had ripped the whole thing out. And it would’ve eventually cost the town more than $100,000 to replace it. Riverdale, population 550, does not have that kind of money lying around.
Heddlesten: That is a big ask of residents of our community.
But Mayor Heddlesten was in the middle of flood season. He worried he couldn’t protect his city without the information the gauge provided.
Now, in most states, the mayor would have been — if you’ll excuse me — up Duck Creek without a paddle. But the mayor was very lucky because Iowa is different. Engineers at the state-funded Iowa Flood Center have developed an incredible tool. Larry Weber is the interim director there. He showed me the gauge in his lab.
Audio clip of Weinberger: If you had to describe this to someone who couldn’t see it, how would you describe it?
Audio clip of Weber: I would say that this is the size of a big shoe box — I just bought myself a new pair of cowboy boots. And I’m going to have a little cylinder the size of a Red Bull can sticking out the bottom, and a couple of little probes out the top that are antennas. So, pretty straightforward, really.
This is a gauge. It’s a fraction of the size of the one the federal government built on the shores of Duck Creek.
Cities and towns can buy the gauge from the Iowa Flood Center. Local officials, like Anthony, can attach it to the side of a bridge over a body of water. And the sensor inside measures the height of that water. It then posts that information online, with a predictive model, so local officials can see how, say, a rainstorm is likely to affect their creek.
The data from the federal gauge is part of a national weather forecasting system. The Iowa gauge is not. But otherwise, it does pretty much what the federal one can do, for way less money. The Iowa-made gauge cost about $7,500.
Audio clip of Heddlesten: That’s a pretty great deal.
When Anthony realized his federal gauge was gone, he bought one of the smaller gauges from the Iowa Flood Center. He bolted it to a bridge over Duck Creek, and it was ready for him on that rainy July night, as the ice melted in his old-fashioned. The predictor model attached to the gauge said that given the rain, Duck Creek was likely to rise eight feet, sometime in the middle of the night.
So, the mayor decided to go down to the creek and measure the flood wall. Could it contain eight extra feet of water?
Audio clip of Heddlesten: I had a tape measure with me. There’s a set of steps that goes down into Duck Creek, and each one of those is about eight inches. And I said, OK, one, two, three, four. Right. And I did the math and I said, whoa, that’s right about eight feet.
The steps were about eight feet in total, the same number of feet the gauge predicted the creek would rise in the rain. That might mean the creek could inundate the homes next door.
Audio clip of Heddlesten: I said, oh, that’s a big question I need to ask myself there. We’re talking about potentially needing to evacuate people.
Mayor Heddlesten thought of one resident in particular: an older man who lives right next to the creek, who uses an oxygen tank — someone who would need extra time and care to get out. And if the creek hit eight feet in the middle of the night, that is a tough time to evacuate.
Audio clip of Heddlesten: I was wanting to ask the Iowa Flood Center that night, how accurate is this prediction? Like, do I need to tell everyone to get out right now, because it’s not accurate low, or do I need to not worry about this because it’s not accurate high; or it’s really accurate and it’s going to be right at the top of the flood wall, and I better tell people: Well, you better be ready.
Remember, this is the first time Anthony is using the new gauge — in the midst of a potentially disastrous flood. He wants to make sure that the prediction is accurate so he’s confident in his decision to evacuate or not.
Audio clip of Heddlesten: So, I call the flood center. It’s Friday night, they’re not a 24/7 operation, right? And so, there’s nobody there to answer the phone.
Audio clip of Weinberger: Can you talk about your head space at that point: It’s pouring rain, all these things are going off, you are responsible for this town of people, and these federal officials — who you had once depended on — had taken a deferred resignation. What were you thinking at that point?
Audio clip of Heddlesten: It’s so heavy. There were a couple of times where I was furious that evening that I couldn’t get ahold of people, that they were gone. That is a heavy, heavy weight to put on somebody, to have to make that decision. I felt like I earned my whole paycheck that night. That was a weighty decision.
Now it’s about 10:30 p.m. Mayor Heddlesten heads up to the emergency operation center the county’s set up. He contacts the Red Cross about arranging a shelter, in case he needs to evacuate residents. He drafts a message to send through his emergency alert system.
Audio clip of Heddlesten: So, then we had to figure out what’s the risk here still? We don’t know.
He had the information from the gauge. It predicted the water would rise to exactly where the flood wall ended. But he knew there was some margin of error there. What were the chances the gauge was underestimating, and the whole neighborhood next to the creek would flood? Thanks to the magic of LinkedIn, Anthony tracked down an engineer at the Flood Center named Felipe. He agreed to run a different model, to see if he could give a more precise answer on how high the creek might rise.
Then, all the mayor could do was wait. And wait. He decided to head back down to the creek to monitor the situation.
Audio clip of Heddlesten: So, we get down there, and as I’m standing there at the flood wall — it’s still raining on us — Duck Creek is a raging inferno. It is a scary, high velocity flood. And if it were to go over that flood wall and hit those houses, we’re not talking about a soaked first floor and a ruined basement, we’re talking about knocking things off foundations and people’s lives being ruined, and people’s lives being lost, right? It’s a scary situation. So, it’s not a thing that you want to be wrong about, right?
And then finally, as he was standing there, panicking, watching the creek rise, at around 11:30 p.m. ——
Audio clip of Heddlesten: Felipe calls me back and he says: “Hey, it’s only going to be four feet. I did the math; the model’s over-predicting a little bit.”
Four feet. Far below the level of the flood wall.
Audio clip of Heddlesten: Ah, I can breathe. I can sleep tonight. It’s going to be OK.
The mayor finally made it home around 1 in the morning.
Audio clip of Heddlesten: Just kind of walked in the door, took off my rain jacket and just, yeah. Big sigh of relief. At that point, I recalled to myself that I had made myself a brandy old-fashioned that was sitting downstairs at my desk, and I was like, I am doing it. So, I went down and I drank my old-fashioned.
What a night. The mayor knows how lucky he is to have the Iowa Flood Center: it’s the technology of the gauges and their modeling predictions, and, importantly, the human experts on call in a crisis. And after what the mayor went through that night, the Iowa Flood Center added its leaders’ cell numbers to the website. Iowans can reach them anytime.
If Mayor Heddlesten hadn’t been able to reach the Iowa Flood Center last July, he might have had to evacuate the neighborhood in the middle of the night for no reason. That may not seem like a big deal on its face. But think about the stress: the panicked phone call, waking up your kids, the decisions of what to take with you, what to save. And then, to later realize you evacuated for no reason? That risks a real loss of trust in local government. Those officials want to get evacuations right — to save lives, but also to preserve their relationship with their residents.
I talked to about a dozen local officials across Iowa — they absolutely love the Iowa Flood Center and all the information it affords them. The gauges are connected to an online mapping system that they use all the time. Here’s one local official, an emergency coordinator named Rick Wulfekuhle, from Buchanan County, Iowa.
Audio clip of Wulfekuhle: We just had a proposal from a developer come through. And they were proposing putting a 30-home subdivision right in the floodway. So, the next meeting I went to, I said, “You realize this area has been underwater every time a frog farts.” And that is literally what I said. I am not about putting 30 families in harm’s way.
This mapping system lets officials game out where to build, how to prepare for extreme weather, and whether to risk lives to rescue stranded residents. For example, during a major flood in 2024, one local official called the gauge developer, Larry Weber, asking if he could risk taking boats into the flooded streets to rescue 300 people.
Audio clip of Weber: So, then we run our model — we give water velocities in all the streets — and say, you’d better go down Third Avenue to get to this street to go there.
Audio clip of Weinberger: Wow.
Audio clip of Weber: And give them that kind of information.
Larry would love for other states to do what he’s done in Iowa. He gave me a price tag; he said the average state could do it for about $2 million to start, and then about half a million a year to maintain it. That is a small fraction of tens of billions of dollars most states spend every year overall. For now, Iowa is the only state in the country with a system like this one. City officials elsewhere have to rely on data from the National Weather Service and Federal Emergency Management Agency maps from the federal government, which are notoriously limited. The interface looks like it’s from Internet 1.0. It’s clunky. I tried looking up my address in Washington, D.C., and that part of the map hasn’t been updated since 2010. It’s just not that useful.
But it’s not just a tech design problem. Back in the 1960s, Congress mandated that the federal government create flood maps for major rivers and the coasts. But Congress didn’t say anything about small tributaries or streams — areas like Duck Creek. And while the FEMA maps were designed to account for hurricanes, the models don’t account for intense bursts of rain that lead to flash flooding, which because of climate change will be a much bigger problem, just as President Trump is rescinding federal support.
It took an unprecedented flood back in 2008 for Iowa to invest in its system. One expert told me that’s typical: Few communities will do what Iowa has done until after the next catastrophic flood hits. But then, as I was wrapping up with this expert, he paused. “Look,” he told me, “what President Trump is doing right now is kind of its own disaster. So it could be the motivator communities need to get moving on preparing for climate change.”
As federal officials continue to disappear, as federal funding evaporates, as the storms hit harder, and furious floods overrun the riverbanks — Iowa has a plan, a blueprint, for other states to follow. They should use it.
Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Jillian Weinberger. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Pat McCusker, Isaac Jones, Carole Sabouraud and Aman Sahota. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The deputy director of Opinion Shows is Alison Bruzek. The director of Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to David Leonhardt and Derek Arthur.
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