New flood, old truths
It is hoped that each new natural disaster, whether an earthquake or a giant mass of mud buried or destructive floods, the man leaves the better armed for the next - or at least they do not repeat the same mistakes . But the recent floods in Mississippi, although if the waters recede, it means human memory.
The famous Wilkes-Barre flood of 1972 and the Mississippi River flood of 1993 led to severe criticism of the Army Corps of Engineers, whose traditional methods of protection against floods have to find much more serious issues, as it could have been. But the body has never abandoned its blind faith in dams and levees that, when the excessively the natural flow leading load current overbuilding and end more harm than good.
Even after the flooding North Carolina in 1999, Congress was requested to amend the federal Flood Insurance Program, so that people would not be more advantageous insurance for the reconstruction of houses flooded plain . Congress a few changes, but not that, and people keep rebuilding in the same place. Finally, after each of these floods, local communities have been invited not to allow new development in the flood plain. But they are obliged, in the hope that the levees still higher than Congress was recalling that the body build, before their madness.
All the old debates have again this year with the flooding of the Mississippi. Major progress has been made in a field. Since 1993, the Confederation and governments hundreds of millions of dollars to buy and demolish houses on 13000 along the Mississippi and its tributaries - the transformation of the property on the open space and allows other owners to ask . It was an important concession to the idea that the fight against water is a proposal to lose, and that the intelligent thing to do is the river is not restrictive, but let it flow naturally into the flood plain.
But making concessions to nature is not something that comes easily to the policies and developers. As Douglas Jehl pointed out yesterday in the Times, the Bush administration has declared its intention to reduce the share of federal funding for the property by acquiring the current 75 per cent to 50 per cent. In addition, the White House tries to kill a precious $ 160 million program will help farmers convert cropland to wetlands, such as natural sponges during floods. In the meantime, the Corps of Engineers, none of the wisest previous floods, there are different barreling Dam Building “-projects, including $ 58 million project just west of Saint-Louis, one on the protection strips Mall in the plains flooded the lower Missouri River.
At times like these, one is for the wisdom to the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the territorial collectivity of the largest natural disasters. President Clinton’s FEMA chief, James Witt, promoted the acquisition. His successor, a campaign Bush appointed Joe Allbaugh operational, is still learning. Mr. Allbaugh was right when he says that Congress must stop subsidizing the man on reconstruction in the flood plain. But it missed the mark when he criticized the river city of Davenport, Iowa, for his errors to build a flood wall, which offered better protection for high waters.
For one thing, his criticism on prejudice vis-à-vis the very structural approaches to protection against floods have contributed to the problem that recent floods. On the other hand, it ignores the fact that Davenport’s approach of the river has been wiser than most. The city has no levees. Its inhabitants have knowingly chosen to continue the river, buildings and parks to leave the coast greenbelts, where other cities might have built levees and offices. The result is that damage is minimal compared with places of dense concentration of buildings, in case of flooding inundated violation of the protection levees, as up and down along the river during 1993 .
As Davenport Mayor Phil Yerington, taking observed:”We are never to fly the river. Nobody has the time depending on the river.”It is a lesson that the federal government and commercial contractors books have yet to learn.