Corps of Engineers Responses to the Changing National Approach to Floodplain Management Since the 1993 Midwest Flood

JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY WATER RESEARCH & EDUCATION The Great Midwest Flood of 1993 brought the attention of the nation to the challenges it faced in dealing with floods. Over a sixmonth period, the ravages of the flood were shown nightly on television and filled columns in the print media. East–West transportation networks throughout the Midwest were severely disrupted and more than 100,000 people were displaced from their homes, many never to return. By the time the accounting was terminated, estimates of flood damage ranged as high as $20 billion and the government’s costs for recovery exceeded $6 billion. Parts of eight states had been hard hit by the floodwaters, and the overall impact on the national economy was significant. Since 1993, major floods have continued to cause damages in riverine and coastal areas of the United States. Many of the significant floods of the Twentieth and early Twenty-First Centuries (i.e., in terms of number of lives lost and/or property damage) have occurred since the 1993 flood. The upper Mississippi basin itself experienced significant floods in 1997 and 2001, and other major floods occurred in the Southeast (1995), northern California (1995), the Ohio Valley (1997), the Red River Basin of the North (1997), and North Carolina (1999) (USGS 2000). Before discussing floodplain management since the Great Midwest Flood of 1993, it is important to review briefly the history of floodplain management in the United States. In 1928, Congress assumed federal responsibility for flood control in the lower Mississippi Valley as a result of a disastrous flood that occurred there in 1927. In 1936, following major flooding in the Northeast and Midwest, Congress passed a Flood Control Act that declared, “destructive floods upon the rivers . . . constitute a menace to national welfare; it is the sense of Congress that flood control is a proper activity of the Federal Government.” However, in spite of over 70 years of work by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to reduce flood damages—primarily by constructing levees, floodwalls, dams and other structural measures— flood losses have continued to grow each decade and are now approaching $6 billion a year (ASFPM 2001), mostly in unprotected areas. At the same time, the Corps has spent $122 billion (in 2002 dollars) on flood control and has prevented an estimated $709 billion (2002 dollars) in damages (USACE 2002a). (The paper by Lauren Cartwright in this issue provides considerable detail about trends in flood damages.) Following the 1993 flood, considerable attention was focused on the nation’s flood damage reduction programs and what should be done to reduce flood losses. This paper reviews the changes that have occurred in national flood policies and programs since 1993 with special attention to the programs of the Corps of Engineers, the agency with primary responsibility for national flood damage reduction project development.