Over the past several weeks, floodwaters have ravaged six Midwestern states, devastating crops, destroying homes and leaving thousands to question their government’s ability to protect their families, homes, and businesses. With early damage estimates easily surpassing the billion dollar mark, many Midwesterners are questioning practices of the federal government that are widely seen as discriminating against small, agrarian communities in the fight against flooding.

In 1993 - the last time such severe flooding plagued the Midwest - the region’s system of levees was quickly reevaluated by the Army Corps of Engineers and determined inadequate. The cost to repair and, in some cases, replace the failing system was tremendous, however, and under direct orders of the Reagan administration, improvements were ordered only if an “economic justification” could be established. For countless small town along the Mississippi River basin, the investment was simply deemed not “worth the value of the property it’s protecting in the long run,” according to Rick Lubben, mayor of La Porte City, Iowa. La Porte City flooded in 1993 and again this year.

Under federal rules, many small Midwestern towns are faced with a grim choice: either finance multi-million dollar improvements alone; or go without. For the overwhelming majority of those towns, the latter option is the only feasible alternative. According to the Los Angeles Times, 71 percent of the 949 towns affected by the flooding have populations of less than 1,000 people, severely limiting their capacity for such expensive projects.

According to the Times, crop losses in Iowa alone are expected to cost the state at least $3 billion in lost revenues alone. In Cedar Rapids, the state’s second largest city, the flooding left more than 1,200 city blocks underwater, leaving behind more than $1 billion in additional damage.

The United States Congress has instructed the Corps of Engineers to reevaluate the process by which they conduct cost-benefit analysis of major projects such as floodwater protection on the Mississippi.