Congress is allocating billions of dollars to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for flood mitigation, construction and invasive species management, but the agency is still waiting for money to replace aging lock-and-dam systems on the Mississippi River.

Colonel Steven Sattinger oversees the Corps’ Rock Island District and notes many of the structures are well past their prime. “They do occasionally, pieces break, machinery breaks, but we have really great crews in the district who are out there 24/7 fixing it and keeping them open,” Sattinger says. “The longer you defer maintenance though, the more likely that someday it’ll fail in a way that we didn’t foresee.”

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