Flood Management: Have we learned nothing?
FLOOD MANAGEMENT: Have we learned nothing?
By JAMES LEE WITT
04/22/2005
Plans for a new levee at St. Peters defy the harsh lessons of the 1993 floods.
Just over a decade ago, the Midwest experienced the costliest flood in the nation's history: the Great Midwest Flood of 1993. It came just one month after I was appointed director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
The flood of '93 had a profound effect on me and my administration. Because of it, we pursued an aggressive program of flood-prone property acquisition and relocation. By purchasing properties that were repeatedly flooded, we saved taxpayers millions of dollars when floods ravaged the same Midwest area in 1995.
Today, the city of St. Peters seems to have forgotten the heartache of 12 years ago. They want to spend $22.5 million to build a levee to protect a proposed Lakeside Business Park. This proposed levee would be built within the regulatory floodway.
Building inside this floodway would essentially undo the progress that has been made in floodplain management, progress such as the buyout of 7,700 properties in 1993 that took thousands of people out of harm's way. Not only did it move thousands to safer locations, but it also allowed the wetlands to be used as a natural sponge, which is what nature intended, instead of pushing water somewhere it wasn't meant to be.
As currently proposed, the St. Peters levee would extend approximately 1,500 feet into the existing regulatory floodway of the Mississippi River. The city claims that it can demonstrate that the project won't have an effect on the "base flood elevation." This defies common sense:
A floodway floods; any man-made structures within a floodway displace large amounts of water. Displaced water leads to higher flood elevations. And higher flood elevations lead to the flooding of homes, towns, cities, farmland and infrastructure both up and down the waterway.
Displacing large amounts of water in the floodplain contradicts the campaign of the Association of State Floodplain Managers for "No Adverse Impact," which was intended to raise awareness that we are all in this together and that the actions of one community should not adversely impact nearby communities; in this case, communities along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.
Dr. Nicholas Pinter, author of "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back on U.S. Floodplains," describes the St. Louis region as the epicenter of dramatic increases in floodplain development. As the title suggests, after billions of taxpayer dollars were spent to move folks out of harm's way - a step forward - it is a big step back to now spend millions to start moving folks back in. The bigger step back will come when the next flood reminds us - the hard way - of the kind of devastation that follows.
Maybe now would be a good time to remind city officials and the levee supporters who are not heeding the lesson's of the past of the costly results of the '93 flood:
- Nine states experienced major flooding: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Illinois.
- Hundreds of levees failed along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.
- Fifty people died.
- Tens of thousands of people were evacuated, some never able to return to their homes.
- A total of 534 counties in 9 states were declared eligible for federal disaster aid; 168,340 people registered for federal assistance.
- Damages reached close to $16 billion.
- Approximately 10,000 homes were completely destroyed.
- Approximately 75 towns disappeared under flood waters.
- Approximately 15 million acres of farmland were inundated.
- Barge traffic on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers was halted for nearly 2 months.
- Bridges were out or inaccessible on the Mississippi River from Davenport, Iowa, downstream to St. Louis, Missouri.
- Bridges were out on the Missouri River from Kansas City downstream to St. Charles, Missouri.
- Ten commercial airports were flooded.
- All Midwest railroad traffic was halted.
The victims of this horrible disaster surely remember it. I certainly do. And with 25-plus years of experience in disaster management, I hope that the citizens of St. Peters will believe the experts, rather than those who have forgotten the lessons of the Great Midwest Flood of 1993.
James Lee Witt is chairman of James Lee Witt Associates in Washington, D.C., a crisis and emergency management consulting firm. He is a former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and has been working with the Great Rivers Habitat Alliance to promote sensible floodplain management practices.
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