When Emilie Hayes and her husband bought a home in St. Louis in 2005, they weren’t worried that it was in a 100-year floodplain. She took it to mean the property would get flooded once a century. But when Ms. Hayes, an order-management specialist for a media company, and her husband, who owns a hardwood flooring business, applied for a permit to do work on the property, a county official broke the news to them that the home sat in a floodway.

Source: Wall Street Journal December 17, 2017 12:00 UTC