OMAHA, Neb.—The U.S. government may have to pay tens of millions of dollars—or more—to landowners along the Missouri River after a court ruled it worsened flooding there since 2007 that killed crops and wrecked homes and businesses.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a lower court’s 2020 ruling that the federal government must pay for the landowners’ loss of value to the land. But the appeals court went even further in its decision last Friday, saying that the government must also pay them for crops, farm equipment and buildings lost to the flooding and finding the government contributed to the devastating flood of 2011.
