After the floods of 93 the city of Ames spent it's federal monies well by
buying up flooded homes along Squaw Creek and converting those areas to
green space. However, the council decided not to encourage businesses to
build outside of the floodplain by rejecting a proposal to expand the regs
to include more acres in the Ames floodway this past year.
Since the flood many Ames businesses have moved to the floodplain - Target,
The Boys and Girl's Club, and First National Bank, for example. They have
set their buildings up on berms, which will probably not protect them when
the floods actually arrive. One businessman told me how he had built his
business well above the height required by the regulations and was still
flooded out in 93. Interesting, isn't it, how he trusted the government to
do what is right?
It is my understanding that FEMA is designed so that it will continue to
provide flood insurance for businesses that were swamped in 93 because of
the City Council's decision about the floodway. One businessman stated at
one of the public meetings that his business location was so profitable
that he preferred to stay there and get flooded out every so often. I
wonder how profitable it would be if he weren't using our tax dollars to
clean up after each flood?
Here is an area where the government could and should save money. Since
Republicans are in the majority and saving money is what they seem to be
all about, we should take care to point out to them that long term planning
is actually cheaper in the long run than short term emergency assistance
flood after flood. Businesses that choose to stay in floodplains should
receive funds to relocate but not to clean up and rebuild after they have
been flooded. It is much less expensive in the long run to relocate
businesses in floodplains than to continue to insure them in flood after flood.
The problem is that the political boundary known as the floodway does not
begin to correspond with the actual floodplain. If floodways corresponded
to where the water actually goes during a flood, then our regs would
actually make some sense.
This is a good time to let our legislators and the president know that we
will stand behind them if they choose to do the right thing. The terms of
FEMA need to be rewritten so that floodplains can be returned to green
space and allow water to pass harmlessly by during spring runoff as well as
in times of flood.
Peggy Murdock
At 08:54 AM 4/28/2001, you wrote:
>This is a message I got from Shelly Sheehy - a leader in the Sierra Club
>in the Quad Cities area. The Club is not mentioned but our message is.
>The people she is congratulating are Sheila Bosworth, a volunter who
>lives a block from the river and Brett Hulsey - staff in the Madison WI
>office.
>
> From:
> [log in to unmask]
>
>Congrats to Sheila and Brett for their efforts when FEMA was here this
>week.
>sls
>
>
>
> Subject:
> NYTimes.com Article: New Flood, Old Truths
> Date:
> Sat, 28 Apr 2001 09:42:23 -0400 (EDT)
> This article from NYTimes.com
>has been sent to you by [log in to unmask]
>
>I wish the QC Times would print this.
>
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>
>New Flood, Old Truths
>
>
>
>
>
>
>ne hopes that each new natural disaster, be it an earthquake or a
>giant mudslide or destructive flood, will leave people better
>prepared for the next one — or at least teach them not to repeat
>the same mistakes. Yet the latest Mississippi flood suggests,
>again, that when the waters recede, so does human memory.
>
> The famous Wilkes-Barre flood of 1972 and the Mississippi River
>flood of 1993 led to fierce criticism of the Army Corps of
>Engineers, whose traditional methods of flood control were found to
>have made matters much worse than they might have been. But the
>Corps has never abandoned its blind faith in dams and levees that,
>when overused, constrict the river's natural flow, invite
>overbuilding and end up doing more harm than good.
>
> Similarly, after the North Carolina flood in 1999, Congress was
>urged to amend the federal flood insurance program so that people
>would no longer get cheap insurance to rebuild homes in the flood
>plain. Congress made some changes, but not that one, and people
>keep rebuilding in the same places. Finally, after each of these
>floods, local communities were urged not to allow new development
>in the flood plain. But they kept doing it, hoping that the
>ever-higher levees that Congress was urging the Corps to build
>would protect them from their folly.
>
> All the old debates have resurfaced with this year's Mississippi
>flood. Great progress has been made in one area. Since 1993,
>federal and state governments have spent hundreds of millions of
>dollars to buy and demolish about 13,000 homes along the
>Mississippi and its tributaries — converting the property to open
>space and allowing the owners to relocate elsewhere. That was an
>important concession to the idea that battling the waters is a
>losing proposition, and that the smart thing to do is not to
>constrict the river, but rather to let it flow naturally into the
>flood plain.
>
> But making concessions to nature is not something that comes
>easily to politicians and developers. As Douglas Jehl pointed out
>in yesterday's Times, the Bush administration has said that it
>intends to reduce the federal share of funding for the property
>acquisition program from the current 75 percent to 50 percent. In
>addition, the White House is trying to kill entirely a valuable
>$160 million program that helps farmers convert cropland to
>wetlands, which act as natural sponges during floods. Meantime, the
>Corps of Engineers, none the wiser for previous floods, is
>barreling ahead with various levee-building projects, including a
>$58 million project just west of St. Louis that is designed to
>protect a strip mall in the flood plain of the lower Missouri
>River.
>
> At times like these, one looks for wisdom to the head of the
>Federal Emergency Management Agency, the government unit that is
>most centrally involved in natural disasters. President Clinton's
>FEMA chief, James Witt, promoted the acquisition program. His
>successor, a Bush campaign operative named Joe Allbaugh, is still
>learning. Mr. Allbaugh was right when he said that Congress must
>stop subsidizing people who insist on rebuilding in the flood
>plain. But he missed the mark when he criticized the river city of
>Davenport, Iowa, for its failure to build a flood wall that might
>have offered greater protection from high waters.
>
> For one thing, his criticism indicated a bias toward the very
>structural approaches to flood protection that have helped
>exacerbate the problem in past floods. For another, it ignored the
>fact that Davenport's approach to the river has been more sensible
>than most. The city has no levees. Its residents have deliberately
>chosen to remain connected to the river, building shoreline parks
>and leaving open spaces where other cities might have built levees
>and offices. The result is that damage is minimal compared with
>places with dense concentrations of buildings that are overwhelmed
>when floods breach the protective levees, as happened up and down
>the river in 1993.
>
> As Davenport's mayor, Phil Yerington, aptly observed: "We're never
>going to beat the river. Nobody ever beats the river." It is a
>lesson that the federal government and the commercial builders have
>yet to learn.
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/28/opinion/28SAT1.html?ex=989465343&ei=1&en=839f6fb0e6b161f9
>
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