The problem is that this condition is geographically inevitable on a floodplain with zero maintenance, or even if you get a little behind on the maintenance. An

The problem is that this condition is geographically inevitable on a floodplain with zero maintenance, or even if you get a little behind on the maintenance. And the catastrophe sets in soon after. It sounds like the town does have some lift stations (deep pits to collect sewage where it must be pumped into sealed forced mains some distance away down or over-hill, unless that area is flooded too) ... but they are in disrepair. Also storm water massively enters the sewer so even if lift stations did work they might flood every time. It would take a massive bond of magical unicorn money to fix, never mind the next phase of raising homes to avoid floods or rebuilding damaged ones. And even then, who would want a home always surrounded by dirty standing water? Perhaps it has gone past no return. What money could be found would be better spent helping to relocate the people to higher ground and condemning the land. The OK town I just left has several empty square blocks bought out by the city. For a whole town it would be disaster. There is probably no single company or entity one could lay all the blame. It was a bad idea to build there but people did anyway from desperation, when conditions were better. Then (probably during drier and more prosperous years) they doubled down on the bad idea and modern sanitary sewers were built working and maintained, but were only marginally resilient to a stretch of flood or bad economy. Even a municipality maintaining a lift station is helpless if the equipment gets repeatedly flooded out. No this is not a climate catastrophe. People have made the term cheap and useless.