By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD–  A day after touring downstate flooding, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters in Springfield he is concerned about levees.

“After the 1993 floods, we started putting more money into these levees,” he said. “It’s a strange, historic political fact that levees north of St Louis along the Mississippi are largely owned by levee districts, which are local property owners; when you head south from St Louis, particularly south from Cairo, Ill., these are levees that are owned by the federal government.”

Durbin says he’s been told you have to go back to 1927 to find flooding as sustained as this year’s.

And Durbin found a way to work criticism of President Trump into the story.

“The fact that our President is the only leader in the world – the only leader in the world – to have withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement tells the whole story,” Durbin said. “The rest of the world understands this. We are going through a dramatic change in weather events. This isn’t by accident.”

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected].