The town of Edmonston in Prince George’s County, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C., is a small hamlet of under 2000 residents, most of them blue-collar workers. Like many other cities in America, times are tough in Edmonston, which has high rates of unemployment and foreclosure. What makes life particularly hard for Edmonston is that it is bisected by the Anacostia River. Due to poor environmental practices, the Anacostia periodically floods the town, wreaking devastation on a place already struggling to get by.