FLOOD CONTROL / HAZARD MITIGATION

* Open space protection saves public funds by preventing development of hazardous areas.

TPLMarketing News re: Pugh Ranch Project, Sacramento County, CA.

Nelson Mathews' and Mike Reeves' Pugh Ranch Project closed in December (1995) using funding related to federal flood mitigation in response to the 1995 California flooding problems. Sacramento County acquired the property with the interim internal funds and ultimately expects to be reimbursed through the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA's) Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.

TPL e-mail correspondence between Ernest Cook and Jennie Gerard. January 1996.

"... the extreme flooding caused by Hurricane Dennis lead to the decision by the South Florida Water Management District to purchase the Aerojet property -- which with some reconfiguring of drainage canals could be used to absorb huge amounmts of water quickly in future hurricanes."

McAliney, Mike (ed.) Arguments for Land Conservation: Documentation and Information Sources for Land Resources Protection, Trust for Public Land, Sacramento, California, December 1993.

Wetlands help prevent and control floods by reducing the velocity and damage potential of flood waters.

Coastal wetlands reduce the impact of tides and storms on surrounding upland areas and help stabilize shores and beaches. The Value of California Wetlands, 1992

In the natural flow of a river, wetlands tend to absorb overflow in times of flooding. In contrast, when levees are built and they burst, the resultant damage costs more than it would have with wetlands alone. New York Times, July 20, 1993

National Park Service, Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program. 1995. Economic Impacts of Protecting Rivers, Trails, and Greenway Corridors., Department of the Interior. National Park Service, Western Region, San Francisco, California.

"Use of geologically or environmentally sensitive areas for open space or recreation purposes can reduce potential property damage costs and loss of life. Hazards which can be mitigated through conservation of open space include flooding, slope instability, structural fire damage, and earthquake losses."

"Potential multi-million dollar claims for landslide damages were avoided in Richmond, California, because property originally proposed for development was purchased for natural parkland instead. In 1980, a major development was proposed on hillside land which was prone to instability. The local community objected the project was denied and the land, purchased by the Trust for Public Land, was eventually transferred to the East Bay Regional Parks District for inclusion in the Wildcat Canyon Regional Park. After major storms in 1982 and 1983, landslides occurred on this property, which would have destroyed development The state of California subsequently passed legislation granting landslide immunity to public agencies who maintain land in a natural condition." (Kent, Jerry. 1990. East Bay Regional Parks District, California.)

"Johnson County, Kansas expected to spend $120 million on stormwater control projects. Instead, voters passed a $600,000 levy to develop a county-wide streamway park system. Development of a greenways network along streambeds will address some of the County's flooding problems, as well as provide a valuable recreation resource."

Thomas, Holly L. February 1991. "The Economic Benefits of Land Conservation." Technical Memo of the Dutchess County Planning Department, Dutchess County New York.

"Floodplains function well as emergency drainage systems-for free-when they are left undisturbed. The public pays a high price when misplaced or poorly designed development interferes with this function. Human encroachment on the natural flood corridors often increases the risk to downstream homes and businesses by increasing the volume of runoff and altering the flood path. The resulting demands for costly drainage improvements, flood control projects, flood insurance, and disaster relief are all, ironically, preventable by conserving and respecting the floodplains from the outset. Rockland County's greenways acquisition program was inspired by the county's dismay over the costs of coping with drainage problems caused by encroachment into floodplain systems."

Stevens, William K. July 20, 1993. "The High Risk of Denying Rivers Their Flood Plains." New York Times.

"By cutting off the flood plain's waters, levees and diversion channels have destroyed and degraded stream-side habitats that contain some of the country's richest biological resources. They have also prevented the flood plain from performing one of its most important natural functions: flood control. By storing and slowing flood waters, the plain reduces their force and height. Containing this water in a narrowly corseted channel, as is commonly done to protect farms and urban settlements has the opposite effect. It raises both the velocity and the height of the flood and makes it all the more frightening and destructive when it breaks through defenses, as it has repeatedly done in the Midwest.

"Across the country, states and communities are exploring alternatives to dikes, levees and flood walls. They are acquiring wetlands to serve as natural flood basins. They are sculpturing the plan to create detention areas for flood waters. They are preserving stretches of flood plain in urban areas which in between periods of high water, serve as parks, ball fields, and greenways. Some communities are discouraging new development on flood plains by requiring expensive flood-proofing measures, such as putting buildings on piers and constructing private detention ponds.

"By 1991, according to an interagency Federal task force on flood plains that issued a report last year, flood-plain land in 17,000 communities occupied more than 145,000 acres and included nearly 10 million households and $390 billion in property. This large scale development, according to the task force, has come at 'a high price extracted annually in deaths, personal injury and suffering, economic loss and damage to or destruction of natural and cultural resources.' Despite extensive and expensive, efforts over the years to control floods through public works (the Corps of Engineers has built 10,500 miles of levees and flood walls alone), inflation-adjusted flood damages per capita were almost 2.5 times as great in the period from 1951 to 1985 as from 1916 through 1950"

Shepard, Richard C. March 1994. "Floodplain Development: Lessons Learned from The Great Flood of 1993." Urban Land.

"The effects of the flood were far-reaching. Transportation was crippled: at least 18 bridges along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers were closed; roads buckled and were washed out; 500 miles of flooded track caused the rerouting of more than 1,000 trains; and 5,000 barges on the Mississippi were idled. Close to 7.1 million acres of farmland were flooded or saturated, resulting in a $2.5 billion dollar crop loss. Drinking water was contaminated and water plants damaged: 58 systems serving more than 500,000 people cut off all service and plants serving more than 1 million other people were severely affected. Flooded wastewater systems daily dumped hundreds of millions of gallons of untreated sewage into the rivers."

"Many floodplain experts argue that the terminology itself- a 100-year frequency flood- is misleading and creates a false sense of security. Floods account for more than any other natural disaster in the United States, with the exception of some prolonged droughts. In most years, floods damages constitute the bulk of federal financial aid for disasters. From 1978 to 1987, NFIP paid out flood insurance claims totaling $2.6 billion. More than 31 percent of the claims were for damage outside the 100-year floodplain. In the Midwest, 40 percent of the buildings that were flooded last summer lay outside the 100-year floodplain."

Abramovitz, Janet N. "Imperiled Waters, Impoverished Future: The Decline of Freshwater Ecosystems", Worldwatch Paper #128, Worldwatch Institute, Washington, D.C.

"Billions of dollars spent for flood control, plus the effects of land degradation, actually increased the severity and costs of flooding on the Columbia, Rhine, and Mississippi rivers."

"Based on successes around the world, and the results of many regional and economic studies worldwide, the report recommends basic changes in policy: recognize that the values that intact ecosystems provide before short-term decisions cause long-term losses; and that governments, lenders, and businesses recognize that many development projects, however glamorous they may seem, can actually reduce economic benefits."

"Economic studies of the Missouri River show that recreation produces, at very little cost, at least four times the revenue of river barge traffic, which requires costly and repeated dredging and channelization. Ending the public subsidies for navigation would also help restore the river's natural functions such as controlling floods and nurturing fisheries."

Hanson, Kate, and Ursula Lemanski,. Spring 1995. "Hard-earned Lesson from the Midwest Floods." River Voices.

"as of early March, 1995, more than $19 million had been obligated by (Iowa's) State Emergency Management Division to purchase flood-damaged homes. Staff of the National Park Service Rivers, Trails & Conservation Assistance Program (NPS) are working with three towns that have requested NPS help to develop and start implementing local open space plans for flood buyouts.

One of the three towns, Cherokee, was Iowa's largest residential buyout: 187 properties in a 67-acre area along the Little Sioux River. When the disaster declaration was made in 1993 and hazard mitigation funding became available, Cherokee was quick to act on the opportunity to further floodplain management goals through property buyouts."

"NPS is helping (the town of) Nevada develop a comprehensive open space plan for the Indian Creek corridor, including the buyout area. Along with trail development, residents are interested in wetland and prairie restoration and environmental education. The Parks Board is exploring opportunities to extend the open space corridor through easements with private landowners and, possibly, purchase of additional property. There is potential for a 60 to 70-acre trail/greenway system within city limits, most of it in the floodplain.

Audubon residents are working on a plan for an 11-acre buyout area along Bluegrass Creek that will include wetland or prairie restoration for an outdoor classroom, as well as trails, a picnic area, and an athletic practice field."

"By focusing local attention on positive long-term uses of their buyout areas as open space, Cherokee, Nevada, Audubon, and other Midwest communities stand to realize benefits much more far-reaching than flood damage reduction. They will be providing opportunities for recreation and conservation education, restoring habitat, reducing soil erosion, and improving water quality."

River Network. August 1995. "River Voices." River Network.

"In an exciting new venture for River Network, we are working with the Portland District of the Corps (of Engineers) to create non-structural flood control on the Willamette River in Oregon by restoring wetlands in the floodway. Rather than wait for a catastrophic event like the Mississippi floods in '93, we want to provide a 'margin of safety' for Portland and other cities on the Willamette by reestablishing the wetlands, woodlands, side channels and oxbow lakes that can hold back floodwaters during the crest of a major flood. We see this as an innovative way to restore habitat for salmon and other fish and wildlife, and also as a way to improve water quality in the Willamette."

Stevens, William K. August 8, 1995. "Restoring Wetlands Could Ease Threat of Mississippi Floods." New York Times.

"Some of the evidence of the value of restored wetlands in abating floods comes from recent work at a complex of experimental wetlands reclaimed from farm fields next to the Des Plaines River in Wadsworth, Illinois, about 35 miles north of the O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.

Where rows of corn once stood until recently, there is now a three-foot-deep marshthe most revealing characteristic of the marsh is less obvious to the casual observer: by measuring and analyzing water pumped from the Des Plaines and water leaving it by the outlet, researchers have found that the 5.7-acre marsh can handle the annual runoff from a Northern Illinois watershed of 410 acres and reduce pollutants by up to 99 percent."

Based on these findings, the amount of land that would have had to be restored to three-foot-deep marshes to have kept the Mississippi River in its banks at St. Louis in 1993: 13 million acres, about the same amount required to produce high water quality throughout the drainage.

'Thirteen million acres may sound like a lot, but it is less than 3 percent of the upper Mississippi watershed. That makes large-scale flood control through wetland restoration feasible.'" (Dr. Donald L. Hey, hydrologist and engineer who directed the Des Plaines project.)

Ayres Jr., B. Drummond. May 24, 1995. "Lessons From 1993 Flood Help Midwest Now." New York Times.

"The special flood programs (adopted after the 1993 flood) that helped cut loss of lives and property included a Federal expenditure of nearly $250 million to buy more than 8,000 bottom land houses and other buildings from Midwesterners willing to move to higher ground.

A decision also was made, after considerable debate, not to reinforce or rebuild levees in some less populated areas so flood waters could spread out over the land the levees originally were designed to protect, thereby reducing pressure on levees in more critical areas."

"What you find is that by allowing some overflow into less critical river bottom areas, the pressure has been taken off more critical areas And in those areas where there has been overflow, not many people lived there anymore."

Hanley, Robert. October 24, 1996. "Drawing Lines in the Shore's Sand." New York Times.

"Since 1978, 75 percent of the Federal flood insurance paid in New Jersey, $268 million of $360 million, has gone to property owners in the state's four coastal countiesmost in towns along the Atlantic or on major bays. In Monmouth County alone, the Army Corps of Engineers is restoring 21 miles of beach at a cost of $226 million.

A year ago, New Jersey created a buyout program like the Federal Government's. With $30 million in voter approved bonds, the program, Blue Acres, is intended to but flood-prone property or storm-damaged homes along the coast or in floodplains of the Passaic River and its tributaries. The land would then be dedicated to conservation or recreation."

"Mayor Kenneth Pringle of Belmar has parted company with some of his counterparts. He said that nonshore taxpayers were wearying of Federal spending to rebuild beaches and provide disaster relief for owners of damaged shore property.

'If someone wants to throw their money away, that's their prerogative,' Mayor Pringle said. 'But I don't know if we should subsidize expenditures close to the shore and automatically bail them out if they make a bad bet.'"

Faber, Scott. March 1994. "Letting Down the Levee." Urban Land.

"The city of Littleton, Colorado, established a 625-acre floodplain park and natural area along 2.5 miles of the South Platte River, where water can be absorbed and temporarily stored during big floodsthe city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, after a series of floods, developed a greenway plan for Mingo Creek that links parks and trails with multipurpose flood control structures."

"The most recent study of this kind (wetland hydrology), an August 1993 report prepared by the Illinois State Water Survey, confirmed that wetlands act as natural sponges, storing water and releasing it over time. The Illinois study found that for every 1 percent increase in the area of a watershed's wetlands, a flood's peak flow in the streams that drain that watershed is reduced by an average of 3.7 percent."

"Since the 1970's a few communities have rejected traditional engineering approaches to flood control in favor of nonstructural alternatives that move people and property out of harm's way and allow the river to spread out and use the natural flood control functions of the floodplain. Soldier's Grove, Wisconsin, is one of the best known of these communities. After repeated flooding, the residents of Soldiers Grove relocated the entire business district from the floodplain of the Kickapoo River to an upland site. The land near the river was converted to a riverside park, and the relocation project now saves an estimated $127,000 annually."

"A project similar to Soldier's Grove used the natural flood control functions of 8,500 acres of wetlands along the upper Charles River in Massachusetts. The cost of buying full title or easements to the wetlands was $10 million, far less than the $100 million needed to build upstream dams and levees. The wetlands store more than 50,000 acre-feet of water, as much as a medium-sized reservoir."

See original study: Doyle, Arthur F. 1983? "The Charles River Watershed: A Duel Approach to Flood Plain Management." U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

American City and County. February 1995. "Flood control project results in children's park."

"The flatness of California's central valley and the rapid growth of the valley's Fresno-Clovis metropolitan area necessitated a unique approach to stormwater management. At the same time, the critical importance of water conservation and the need for recreational open space presented an unparalleled opportunity for stormwater system design. The Fresno Metropolitan Flood Control District now serves an urbanizing area of 300 square miles and a population of 600,000. By far the most popular use of the basins is for the neighborhood parks. Basins in residential areas are excavated to shallow depths with flattened side slopes.

Finished basins include trees, turf and sprinklers. Today, five basins are outfitted as active playgrounds and 12 serve as passive parks.

The most unique component of the system is a recently completed park for disabled children. The park came in $12,000 under its $1.2 million budget.

Total community gifts and grants exceeded $320,000, and thousands of volunteer hours were invested in design, fundraising, landscaping and construction."

Farber, Stephen and Robert Costanza. 1987. "The Economic Value of Wetland Systems." Journal of Environmental Management, v. 24.

This study used both an economic willingness-to-pay (WTP) and an energy analysis method of establishing the social value of a wetlands system in South Louisiana. The economic value of commercial fishing, recreation (hunting and recreational fishing) and storm protection were estimated using the WTP survey method. An energy analysis was used to measure the value of the energy processed by the wetland. The storm protection values included only wind protection values. Estimates of flood protection values of wetlands were not included in this study and may be much greater in some instances.

" estimates range from $590 per acre using WTP for commercial fishing and hunting, recreation, and storm wind protection, to $6,400 to $10,000 per acre using an EA (energy analysis) method. This range is quite large for management decisions. In the past, this uncertainty has caused managers to ignore the consumer value of wetlands We feel that this is not adequate. The $590 per acre WTP estimate is almost certainly an understatement because it excludes several known wetland services (such as flood protection), and the $6,400 to $10,000 per acre EA estimates are probably high because they include wetland products that may not be economically valuable."

Hazard Mitigation and Relocation Assistance Act of 1993,(107 STAT. 2054) Public Law 103-181-Dec. 3, 1993

Following the Mississippi Flood 1993, the Stafford Act was amended to include property acquisition and relocation assistance. A project is eligible only if

"(A) the applicant for the assistance is other wise eligible to receive assistance under the hazard mitigation grant program established under subsection (a); and

(B) on or after the date of enactment of this subsection, the applicant for the assistance enters into an agreement with the Director that provides assurances that---

"(i) any property acquired, accepted, or from which a structure will be removed pursuant to the project will be dedicated and maintained in perpetuity for a use that is compatible with open space, recreational, or wetlands management practices;

(ii) no new structure will be erected on property acquired, accepted or from which a structure was removed under the acquisition or relocation program other than--

(I) a public facility that is open on all sides and functionally related to a designated open space;

(II) a rest room; or

(III) a structure that the Director approves in writing before the commencement of the construction of the structure; and

(iii) after receipt of the assistance with respect to any property acquired, accepted or from which a structure was removed under the acquisition ore relocation program--

(I) no subsequent application for additional disaster assistance for any purpose will be made by the recipient to any Federal entity; and

(II) no assistance referred to in subclause (I) will be provided to the applicant by any Federal source"

Under Section 4 of the Act, Treatment of Real Property Buyout Programs, those projects which fall under the "qualified buyout program'- i.e. those properties which are bought out as a result of damage from the 1993 Mississippi flood, do not qualify for the above program.

These amendments to the Stafford Act increased the federal share of hazard mitigation grants from 50 to 75%, giving communities more incentive to pursue buyouts and other forms of mitigation. Additionally, the stipulation added mandating that land acquired through buyouts must be used for open space, recreation or wetland management -- in perpetuity -- will help prevent redevelopment in buyout areas.

Page last updated 04/03/2000