US built nearly 2,000 km of Mississippi River levees to control floods Nearly 2,000 kilometres of levees built along the Mississippi River over the past century helped protect cities and farmland from major floods. But the barriers also caused one of North America’s most serious ecological losses. By cutting coastal estuaries off from vital river…

New Jersey built a massive seawall A massive concrete seawall constructed along the northern New Jersey coastline to shield a public highway and beachfront properties achieved its goal of protecting landward structures, but caused the complete loss of the sandy shoreline it sat upon. According to a coastal hazard report published by the United States…

US had just two 500-foot smokestacks An effort by American power companies to reduce local air pollution in the 1970s ended up creating a much wider environmental crisis, turning a local health problem into a continent-wide acid rain emergency. By building huge smokestacks to send coal emissions away from nearby towns, power companies pushed sulfur…