It did rain cats and dogs, of course, but the people Achenbach talked with also said changes in the way Iowans use their land contributed to the second "500-year flood" in the last 15 years. (Remember the Great Flood of 1993?) The people Achenbach talked with argued that, for a variety of reasons, water was running more quickly into streams and rivers. Fields have been plowed up to streambeds, leaving little water-absorbing buffer. Fields have been engineered to speed drying by quickly draining water. More acres are planted and fewer are left in conservation programs. Wetlands have been removed. There is less crop rotation. All of these things have helped speed water into streams and that is increasing the severity of flooding.

There are plenty of other reasons. The Midwest is in a very wet weather cycle. A result of global climate change? Who knows?

The high schoolers knew that people in this part of South Texas worried that an abandoned chemical plant posed a health and safety hazard. Red Barn Chemical closed in 1985, but the relics of the factory stayed. When the students interviewed local residents, "stories of jumping bicycles from piles of powdered chemicals, smelling the ammonia fumes from the plant and losing relatives to cancer and babies to miscarriage poured out." The students then made their findings public at a community meeting.

Their environmental study will go on. Further, Sara Perkins of The Monitor writes, "the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has assigned an investigator to the site after students wrote the agency, noting the strong possibility that the soil there could still be contaminated."