Pitching in: City employees worked hard to save the historic Memorial Auditorium in Burlington, Iowa. But Mississippi River floodwaters breached their sandbag barrier on Monday. (Julie Jacobson/AP)
Why flooding worsens
Development, farm practices, and population growth have increased the risk of flooding.
By Richard Mertens | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor/ June 17, 2008 edition
Correspondent Richard Mertens discusses Midwest towns that have moved after severe flooding – and why more may relocate.
Correspondent Richard Mertens
Chicago
Up and down the flood-ravaged river valleys of the upper Midwest, high water has inflicted billions of dollars of damage to homes, businesses, and crops. It has displaced tens of thousands of families and brought immeasurable suffering. It has also brought a new concern for the region’s river towns and cities: Flooding in the Midwest seems to be getting worse.
Researchers and other observers say such episodes are likely to worsen as efforts to protect vulnerable communities are outpaced by factors that increase the risk of flooding, including the ongoing practice of building on river flood plains.
“We’re probably more at risk than we’ve ever been,” says Larry Larson, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, based in Madison, Wis.
Most cities and towns in the Midwest lie along rivers and streams. Hydrologists and planners say that the cumulative effects of decades of land-use choices have gradually increased the likelihood of flooding. Throughout Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, for example, much farmland is drained by buried tiles that carry rainwater quickly away from the fields into streams and rivers. Population growth, bringing new highways and subdivisions, increases runoff. And communities keep building on flood plains, which not only puts new development at risk but also reduces the amount of flood plain available to absorb floodwater.
In many communities, levees protect low-lying neighborhoods and farmland. “America has had a love affair with levees since the 1800s,” says Marceto Garcia, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. But levees cause new problems by confining rivers and increasing flooding in other stretches.
“The water has to go somewhere,” says Douglas Johnston, chairman of the community and regional planning department at Iowa State University in Ames. “It will go higher and faster downstream. Any defensive measure taken upstream will only heighten the problem downstream.”
Levees also leave some people with a false sense of security. In some cases, experts say, homeowners don’t know that their houses are at risk of flooding.
Experts also fault poor local planning. They say that economic and political pressures in many cases cause communities to slight flood-plain management for fear of hurting economic growth. In addition, they say, communities typically plan for present conditions without taking into account future growth and developments upstream that may create worse flooding – and worse damage – in the future.
“We have as a nation spent increasing amounts of money on preventing floods, and yet the cost of flooding continues to rise dramatically,” says Andrew Fahlund, vice president for conservation at American Rivers, an environmental advocacy group based in Washington. “Clearly we’re not doing something right. Certain kinds of flooding are going to be pretty much unavoidable. When water levels get to a certain point it’s pretty difficult to prevent damage. Our hearts go out to people who have been impacted by all this. The fact is that we have reduced the capacity our rivers have to absorb these floods significantly.”
Climate change has recently cast a new and disturbing uncertainty over flood-management questions by suggesting that history may be an unreliable guide to the future. Kenneth Potter, a civil and environmental engineer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says many scientists agree that climate change is likely to increase the occurrence and severity of storms as well as droughts, and thus increase the likelihood of flooding.
“The question is, are you going to face that once a century or once every 10 years?” he asks.
Ten months ago, Gays Mills, Wis., suffered what was then the biggest flood in memory. Then, a week and a half ago, monsoon-like rains lashed the region, and an even worse flood washed through town.
Now, as the mud dries and local businesses like Mickelson’s grocery store reopen, residents are feeling vulnerable.
“After last year, we all kind of relaxed,” says village president Larry McCarn. “We all figured it would be a while before it happened again. Now people are saying it could happen next week.”
After the last major Midwest flood in 1993, some lessons were learned, experts say. In Iowa, Johnston said, some communities raised their levees, which helped them survive this year’s flood.
Other lessons went unheeded. The Clinton administration commissioned a major study of the flooding that, among other things, recommended an overhaul of flood management and closer coordination of state, local, and national efforts. “In terms of national policy since 1993, there has not been significant change,” says Mr. Larson.
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Comments
2. north dakota | 06.18.08
The article hit the nail on the head. The unintended consequences of human development keep the costs of natural disasters elsewhere rising. As long as humans do not have to pay the full and true cost of their mistakes in engineering and development, costs will continue to rise for the rest of us as taxpayers and payers of insurance. We say let homeowners build on a flood plain if they want but do not expect any subsidy in any form such as flood insurance, disaster relief, or private insurance. From the hurricanes, insurance companies have finally come to the realization that their premiums were not high enough for people who insisted on building in harms way and increasing premiums for people not in harms way generate a backlash.
3. wnyoldguy | 06.19.08
Agricultural areas are expected to be flooded periodically and crop losses are expected. The soils indicate the limits of the flood plain and the elevations that have been subjected to flooding in the past. Both depth of flooding and frequency of flooding can be determined by the soil layers.
The destruction of residences, businesses and infrastructure in low-lying areas is largely a man-made problem that is aggravated by inadequate community planning, building codes and subdivision requirements. The situation is further aggravated by improper building design that incorporates high value improvements at flood-prone elevations. The typical response is to attempt to remedy the deficiencies by building a levee or flood wall at public expense.
Flooding is an elevation problem that should be adequately incorporated into all improvements to minimize the consequences of natural threats. While we can’t control the weather, we can elevate a site prior to construction and can minimize possible damage by not placing mechanical systems, etc. in the low elevations of the construction. While the current flooding is historic in nature, it was predictable based on the available evidence. Our tendency to minimize up-front costs dominates development, resulting in excessive after-construction maintenance requirements.
4. Change NOW | 06.19.08
as a planner, no you are not doing a lot of things rights, namely not listening to professional planners who have degrees in favor of developers who only want profit….just like politicians, developers will tell you anything you want to hear with absolutely no expectation of actually doing it….unless forced…..by planning/town boards, which usually roll over….
Planners have a duty to protect everybody and, every single time, over and over, after a man-made disaster which could have been prevented, a supervisor, mayor etc. will say, gee, maybe we should have done something different….or in the Corps’ case, let’s just build the levees higher this time and/or deeper….which, even fifty years ago, when building the N.O. levees, decided to ignore independent scientists’ opinions, who all said that levees alone are not the solution, and described the benefits of natural floodplains, floodways, wetlands…etc…it never ends…..especially if our govt. keeps straightening rivers, paving over/decimating natural floodplains, and just pays to let people rebuild in the same flood-prone areas, and then when people cannot get affordable insurance (because the insurance companies determine you are living in a floodplain), if there is somebody w/political clout, somebody’s home/business etc gets rebuilt anyway in the same exact spot and taxpayers across the country foot the bill….over and over, same w/california and forest fires…same on gulf coast…against the wishes of rich people who would like to own all the beaches, in miss, they are at least discussing a ten mile wide buffer to protect for future hurricanes/flooding…and actually try to work w/nature…..we’ll see if common sense or politics prevails…..
5. Evan | 06.19.08
I’m a planner, and let me tell you, a lot of people don’t care. A week after Hurricane Katrina, I got a request for a small subdivision inside the 100-year floodplain. Our local ordinances, as well as the State building code, clearly allowed the development, provided the “correct” steps were taken. Would I buy a house there? No way. But will someone else, who likes the fact that they probably won’t have any neighbors in their back yard because it’s flood plain? You bet. Oh, and then they’ll complain because they have to buy flood insurance.
6. Dave Reid | 06.20.08
It’s about time we begin to investigate land-use patterns impact on flooding. It seems to me that as we sprawl outward we eat up land that would otherwise be helpful in capturing storm water and because the area is less helpful in storm water retention we the area can no longer support heavy rains and you get more flooding.
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1. destruction | 06.18.08
this is what humen get by destroying the enviroment !