END GAMES Erin Hourihan

Gruesome deaths among the homeless along the Chicago River trigger public fears of disease.  Talk of interning all Chicago homeless behind high walls at this location complicates rebuilding of a nearby historic neighborhood damaged by violent weather. 

A small Iowa town on the upper Mississippi River struggles to find support from government when levees protecting the town start to collapse.  Yet upstream corporate landowners and grain depots expand and harden their levees with federal money, modifying river currents that accelerate erosion of the town’s aging protections.

An author predicting record rainfall that could collapse Houston’s economy draws unrelenting attacks from government and the business community.  No one is watching when another environmental threat becomes reality.

Homes on the North Carolina coast, abandoned due to damage from increasingly violent storms, has become a refuge for the destitute and homeless.  County Services and a State Senator stand in opposition to professional investors who would buy these derelict properties and claim federal restoration funds, even as they help the buildings collapse into the Atlantic Ocean.

Arizona is faced with rationing of fresh water.  Subdivisions are closing.  Farms are dying.  One family struggles to protect their 200 year old family farm by introducing solar panels over the angry objections of a subdivision homeowner who would rather protect the views from her home overlooking the farm.

Western Pennsylvania, like most of America, relies on a vulnerable  interstate transmission grid for electricity.  One energy producer attempts go “off grid”, relying on a mix of local natural gas and alternative energy to supply electricity to Kellis County.