Mississippi River city ponders a wall it has long rejected

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — Hundreds of communities line the Mississippi River on its 2,348-mile journey to the Gulf of Mexico, but Davenport, Iowa, stands out for the simple reason that people there can actually dip their toes in the river without scaling a flood wall, levee or other impediment.

It’s a point of pride in Davenport, a city of 100,000 people that calls itself Iowa’s front porch and which has repeatedly tolerated the floods that have long since convinced all other major riverfront cities to build concrete or dirt walls.

“It’s the personality of the community,” said Kelli Grubbs, who runs a business a few blocks from the nearly half-mile-wide river. “There is just a great love of the river.”

That love is being tested this summer after record-setting floods broke through temporary barriers and for weeks inundated some of Davenport’s trendiest restaurants and shops with foul-smelling water. Now that the river has finally seeped back to its banks, business owners and city officials are confronting a painful question: Can they still remain connected with the river without being overwhelmed by it?

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