by Roger B. Canfield

About the author: Roger B. Canfield is a writer for the New American, a biweekly magazine published by the John Birch Society, a conservative organization that advocates the abolition of many federal regulatory agencies.

In the spring of 1997, as in the previous few years, major flooding around the U.S. has demonstrated that while man is given stewardship over the vast and varied earth God has created, he is nonetheless at the mercy of the elements when conditions grow extreme. While man is required to plan and implement strategies for managing his land resources—and does so with remarkable ingenuity and efficiency—on occasion those strategies prove inadequate to the terrible forces of nature. Witness the devastating floods which have wrought untold sorrow, death, and destruction on those living in...