NEW DIRECTIONS IN FLOODPLAIN MANAGEMENT1

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Over the last 30 years, average annual riverine flood damages have exceed $2 billion. Damages associated with the Mississippi River Flood of 1993 exceeded $12 billion and these costs do not include the non‐quantifiable, human impacts of this disaster. In a report submitted to the White House in June 1994, a federal interagency floodplain management review committee proposed better ways to manage the nation's floodplains. The committee indicated that the 1993 Mississippi River flood was the result of a significant hydrometeorological event, that federal flood control efforts in the Mississippi basin had prevented nearly $20 billion in potential damages, and that, in spite of federal flood damage reduction efforts, throughout the nation people and property remain at risk to inevitable future flooding. It recommended that the division of decision and cost‐sharing responsibilities among federal, state and local governments be more clearly defined, and that the nation adopt a strategy of, sequentially, avoiding inappropriate use of the flood‐plain, minimizing vulnerability to damage through both nonstruc‐tural and structural means, and mitigating damages as they occur. The report did not call for abandonment of human use of the flood‐plain but argued for full consideration of the economic, social and environmental costs and benefits of all future floodplain activity.