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EDITORIAL: High water, hard choices
By St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Some things in life are inevitable. Death and taxes rank right up there. So does flooding along the Meramec, Missouri and Mississippi rivers.
Almost as inevitable are the flood-season calls for improved flood protection, which, more often than not, are pleas for higher levees. That was the initial reaction of Herbert Adams, the mayor of Pacific, after Easter weekend flooding damaged 180 homes and 30 businesses in his community.
Mr. Adams noted that a new $49 million flood wall had protected nearby Valley Park, and he called on state and local lawmakers to get funding for a levee in Pacific. "We need flood control," he said. "Having and storing sandbags is not flood control."
True enough. But flood control also involves a lot more than simply building levees, as Mr. Adams has since acknowledged. In fact, that piecemeal approach not only doesn't solve the region's flooding problem, but actually adds to it.
In Monday's Post-Dispatch, reporter Ken Leiser described a small, hand-lettered sign that appeared in a flooded section of Pacific last month. With grim humor, it offered "thanks for the water, Valley Park."
It's no joke, though. Levees built to keep the water out of one downstream town can result in worse flooding upstream. That's especially true in the Meramec River valley, which is bordered by little natural flood-plain land that could absorb flood waters.
A 1987 assessment by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concluded that a levee in Pacific would cost far more than the benefits it would provide. Last year, U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof, R-Columbia, tried to get funds for an updated cost-benefit analysis but couldn't get congressional approval. He plans to continue pressing for such a study.
Twenty years of growth may have changed the potential benefits of a levee, but those same 20 years also have seen the expense of building levees increase as well. It is far from certain that the results of a new cost-benefit analysis would be significantly different from the old one.
In any case, the corps has more pressing demands on its limited funds -- most obviously the imperative to restore deteriorating levees in the Metro East region that threaten billions of dollars in development and tens of thousands of homeowners.
Pacific, meanwhile, has less destructive and less expensive alternatives available to it. Among them: buying out homeowners in low-lying areas and using zoning regulations to discourage development in flood-prone sections.
There already have been some federal buyouts along the Meramec River and even along the Mississippi. The best known example of the latter is the entire town of Valmeyer, which suffered severe damage in the catastrophic floods of 1993 and then was relocated from the Mississippi flood plain to the high bluffs overlooking its former site.
The idea of discouraging development in flood-prone areas runs counter to the trend in most of Missouri. Instead, there's been a flood of development in the bottomland of the Missouri River, much of it protected by massive levees that keep flood waters out but also keep river levels high and put added pressure on older flood walls up and down the river. Some of the development has been encouraged by tax incentives. This makes no sense.
It is impossible to say with certainty when the next catastropic flood will occur. But like death and taxes, it will come, and there is no preventing it. We can, however, be smart about it and take action to limit the number of homes and businesses that stand to be destroyed by its irresistible force.
To see more of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.stltoday.com.
Copyright © 2008, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
Subscribe To Lake AlertsAlmost as inevitable are the flood-season calls for improved flood protection, which, more often than not, are pleas for higher levees. That was the initial reaction of Herbert Adams, the mayor of Pacific, after Easter weekend flooding damaged 180 homes and 30 businesses in his community.
Mr. Adams noted that a new $49 million flood wall had protected nearby Valley Park, and he called on state and local lawmakers to get funding for a levee in Pacific. "We need flood control," he said. "Having and storing sandbags is not flood control."
True enough. But flood control also involves a lot more than simply building levees, as Mr. Adams has since acknowledged. In fact, that piecemeal approach not only doesn't solve the region's flooding problem, but actually adds to it.
In Monday's Post-Dispatch, reporter Ken Leiser described a small, hand-lettered sign that appeared in a flooded section of Pacific last month. With grim humor, it offered "thanks for the water, Valley Park."
It's no joke, though. Levees built to keep the water out of one downstream town can result in worse flooding upstream. That's especially true in the Meramec River valley, which is bordered by little natural flood-plain land that could absorb flood waters.
A 1987 assessment by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concluded that a levee in Pacific would cost far more than the benefits it would provide. Last year, U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof, R-Columbia, tried to get funds for an updated cost-benefit analysis but couldn't get congressional approval. He plans to continue pressing for such a study.
Twenty years of growth may have changed the potential benefits of a levee, but those same 20 years also have seen the expense of building levees increase as well. It is far from certain that the results of a new cost-benefit analysis would be significantly different from the old one.
In any case, the corps has more pressing demands on its limited funds -- most obviously the imperative to restore deteriorating levees in the Metro East region that threaten billions of dollars in development and tens of thousands of homeowners.
Pacific, meanwhile, has less destructive and less expensive alternatives available to it. Among them: buying out homeowners in low-lying areas and using zoning regulations to discourage development in flood-prone sections.
There already have been some federal buyouts along the Meramec River and even along the Mississippi. The best known example of the latter is the entire town of Valmeyer, which suffered severe damage in the catastrophic floods of 1993 and then was relocated from the Mississippi flood plain to the high bluffs overlooking its former site.
The idea of discouraging development in flood-prone areas runs counter to the trend in most of Missouri. Instead, there's been a flood of development in the bottomland of the Missouri River, much of it protected by massive levees that keep flood waters out but also keep river levels high and put added pressure on older flood walls up and down the river. Some of the development has been encouraged by tax incentives. This makes no sense.
It is impossible to say with certainty when the next catastropic flood will occur. But like death and taxes, it will come, and there is no preventing it. We can, however, be smart about it and take action to limit the number of homes and businesses that stand to be destroyed by its irresistible force.
To see more of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.stltoday.com.
Copyright © 2008, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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Doug wrote on Apr 4, 2008 7:05 AM: