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Growth concerns rise in flood areas
Hurricane Katrina-style devastation could be seen in other parts of the nation as development pressure puts more housing in flood plains.
Date published: 2/19/2006
By ANDREW BRIDGES ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER ST. LOUIS--Concentrated development in flood-prone parts of Missouri, California and other states has significantly raised the risk of New Orleans-style flooding as people snap up new homes even in areas recently deluged, researchers said yesterday. Around St. Louis, where the Mississippi River lapped at the steps of the Gateway Arch during the 1993 flood, more than 14,000 acres of flood plain have been developed since then. That has reduced the region's ability to store water during future floods and potentially put more people in harm's way, said Adolphus Busch IV, a scion of the Anheuser-Busch brewing family who is chairman of the Great Rivers Habitat Alliance. Similar development has occurred around Dallas, Kansas City, Mo., Los Angeles, Omaha, Neb., and Sacramento, Calif., said Gerald Galloway, a professor of engineering at the University of Maryland. "The half-life of the memory of a flood is very short. You can already hear it in Washington, D.C.: 'New Orleans where?'" Galloway said of the lack of action in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina last summer. The research was presented yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In California, development in the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta, where flood control efforts first started in the mid-1800s, represents a major risks to cities such as Stockton as they expand, said Jeffrey Mount, a professor of geology at the University of California, Davis. "We are reinventing Katrina all over again," Mount said. Mount estimates there is a 2-in-3 probability over the next 50 years of a catastrophic levee failure in the massive delta region east of San Francisco. Even a moderate flood could breech the delta's levee system, while a larger one, perhaps following an earthquake, would inundate the region, Mount said. The Sacramento-San Joaquin delta, which covers 738,000 acres, receives runoff from more than 40 percent of California. Much of the land is below sea level and relies on more than 1,000 miles of levees for protection against flooding, according to the California Department of Water Resources. "In California, we know that we have two kinds of levees: Those that have failed and those that will fail," Mount said.
Date published: 2/19/2006
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