"HAMBURG, Iowa — Driving along a deeply rutted levee, Heath Smith points to a basketball, picnic basket and pink Big Wheel.

He drives past a massive porch. A boat and a semi’s missing trailer sit up ahead. He’s found a cooler filled with beer.

“You see people’s lives caught on this levee,” Smith, an Environmental Protection Agency on-scene coordinator, told The Des Moines Register.

The remnants from record Missouri River flooding are heartbreaking, but Smith and Jeff Pritchard, another EPA coordinator, are hunting more dangerous debris — orphaned containers filled with industrial chemicals, pesticides, diesel fuel, oil and other potentially hazardous materials.

The federal crew is in western Iowa to stop possible leaks from drums, tanks and totes, and remove and dispose of the environmental threats."

Donnelle Eller reports for the Associated Press May 11, 2019. [2]