America’s Disastrous Flood-Control Policies

By William S. Becker

Increasingly dangerous real estate development has put millions of Americans and their homes at
serious risk of flooding. The danger is growing, but the United States has no effective national
plan to deal with it. In fact, U.S. government policies going back to the mid-20th century are
making the risks of lost lives and property even more severe.

An effective national disaster policy today must deal with factors like these:

 Americans keep building in river and coastal floodplains.

 There are no incentives or rules to stop them.
 Coastal storms and rains are more severe and will get worse.
 Urban designs increase flood damages.
 Legacy flood-control structures have aged beyond their intended life.
 The structures were not designed to control today’s larger flood, and
 A real estate bubble is putting flood-prone communities in danger of real-estate collapse.

However, experts confirm that America's disaster policy is exacerbating flood risks. One is Larry
Larson, who has spent 60 years helping cities reduce flood risks. He is now the Director
Emeritus of the American Association of State Floodplain Managers (AASFM), which he
founded in 1977. He is frustrated at the perfect storm national policymakers have allowed to
develop.

A brief history of America's response to floods will put this in context.

Floods are a natural function of rivers. They refresh wetlands, deposit fertile silt on cropland,
recharge groundwater, and provide wildlife habitat. During floods, unobstructed rivers inhibit the
speed and force of water by meandering, spreading out, nourishing wetlands, and recharging
groundwater.

The areas they occupy are called floodplains. More than 40 million Americans in the lower 48
states live in them. That’s a conservative estimate because it only counts people living in
floodplains with an average reoccurrence rate of once every100 years. Now, however, much
larger and rarer floods are becoming more common. They’ll continue getting larger and more
destructive because of global climate change.

Ocean waves have a purpose, too. They transfer carbon dioxide (CO2) between water and the
atmosphere in the Earth's carbon cycle, where CO2 moves through oceans, air, soils, vegetation,
wetlands, living organisms, and even rocks.

Floods are only disasters when people and property get in their way. Unfortunately, that happens
too often people are drawn to water. In addition to the 40 million Americans along rivers, about
127 million live in coastal counties where storm surges, hurricanes, sustained rains, and rising
sea levels are threats. By mid-century, 4.3 million acres of coastal property worth $35 billion
could be under water, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA).

Flood control and recovery used to be left to state and local governments. Then in 1917,
Congress passed a bill to involve the federal government. In 1936, Congress waded neck-deep
into flood disasters by ordering the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to bulldoze rivers into
submission and to protect coastal property with sea walls, levees, breakwaters, bulkheads, groins,
jetties, revetments, riprap, and concrete.

In other words, national policy let people build homes and businesses wherever they wanted,
with all taxpayers footing the bill for disaster prevention, response, and recovery. That’s still the
case. Insurance would help, but although 99 percent of U.S. counties experienced flood disasters
from 1996 to 2019, only 4 percent of homeowners had flood insurance at the end of last year.

As far back as 1958, a review of national policy found "federal incentives are creating a
perception that if a serious flood hazard develops, the federal government will deal with it."
Sixty-five years later, that perception persists, encouraging state and local governments to spend
too little on flood prevention. There are few effective federal incentives to keep people out of
floodplains. In fact, more people are moving in than out. For example, a study just published by
the American Planning Association found that more than 10 new residents are built in North
Carolina for every home removed under a federal buy-out program.

Dams and levees are supposed to prevent river floods. More than 90,000 dams and an estimated
40,000 miles of levees are on duty in the United States. But most dams are not for flood control;
they store water, generate electricity, protect crops, and provide recreation. Nevertheless,
Americans have built their homes below dams that don’t meet standards for protecting lives.

The most sensible way to prevent flood disasters has always been to forbid real estate
development where rivers and oceans go. But communities want property-tax revenues from
waterfront homes. Many are worth more than twice the value of comparable homes inland. That
creates another kind of risk. Researchers report flood-prone homes are overvalued by as much as
$237 billion because the housing market hasn't considered flood risks. So, another type of storm
is gathering: a real estate "bubble" like the one that burst and caused the subprime mortgage
crisis in the 2000s.

There’s more. Ironically, many of the structures built to protect lives and property are now
endangering them. Dams and levees were built to be reliable for 50 years and to offer protection
based on past floods. Now, the average levee is older than 50 and the average dam is
approaching 60. Few, if any, were designed to handle the bigger floods caused by climate
change.

There are ways to prevent flood disasters. For example, in the federal buy-out program
mentioned above, FEMA helps local governments buy floodplain homes, demolish them, and
reconnect rivers and oceans to their natural floodplains. But the program is underutilized. It has
several shortcomings, including delays of up to 5 years before local governments finalize a home
purchase, and systemic features that leave low-income homeowners underserved.

So, FEMA still allows homeowners to build and rebuild in harm's way, sometimes repeatedly.

Larson suggests limiting the federal share of disaster recovery to 50 percent, with states and
localities paying the rest. The federal share could increase to 75 percent for communities that
limit development in risky places.

Experts have suggested other improvements. FEMA should base buyout prices on the sales of
comparable homes outside the floodplain so families can afford to purchase or build homes
elsewhere. Or Congress could reduce red tape by turning the program over to states, with federal
grants contingent on removing buildings from floodplains.

Clearly, Congress must get ahead of the developing crisis of aging and inadequate flood-control
structures. Four years ago, the Associated Press found at least 1,680 dams posed potential risks
in the United States. The Association of State Dam Safety Officials says no one knows precisely
how many dams have failed, but failures have been recorded in every state.

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimated it would cost well over $100 billion two
years ago to improve and maintain the nation's riskiest dams and levees. The money would be
better spent by relocating all but essential structures from floodplains. Our long-range vision
could be a contiguous, biodiverse protected national seashore accessible to all.

Our new mission should be flood avoidance rather than flood control. Congress should fix this
soon because Americans are still moving in the wrong direction, structures are still aging, and
the climate will not wait for us to get this right.

William S. Becker is the executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, which works with
thought leaders in the United States to design clean-energy and climate-action policies presidents of the
United States can implement with their executive authorities. He is the author of “The Creeks Will Rise:
People Coexisting with Flood,” a book that advocates moving people and buildings out of floodplains
rather than relying on traditional mitigation programs dominated by trying to control rivers with dams
and levees, and oceans with breakwaters, floodwalls and a variety of other engineered devices. As the
newspaper publisher in one flood prone community, Becker proposed and help facilitate the relocation of
a business district to higher ground. He later launched a program at the U.S. Department of Energy to
help disaster-affected communities recover with sustainable energy systems and urban designs. A version
of this article appeared originally in the on-line news service The Hill.