[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 146 (Saturday, October 8, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 8, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                        THE GREAT FLOOD OF 1993

                                 ______


                            HON. ALAN WHEAT

                              of missouri

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, October 7, 1994

  Mr. WHEAT. Mr. Speaker, I wish today to express my disappointment at 
the failure of this Congress to meet the challenges remaining from the 
Great Flood of 1993.
  Late last summer, and again this January, the Congress approved money 
to assist flood fighting and recovery efforts in nine Midwestern 
States. This included aid for homeless families, money to rebuild towns 
and vital facilities, funds to repair damaged levees, and grants to 
States and localities that expended huge sums battling the rising 
waters. It was a massive effort, and has been largely successful in 
piecing back together the tattered economy of the Midwest.
  The Congress also approved additional money to buy property that had 
been damaged by the waters from willing sellers who had tired of 
suffering repeated floods. These buyout projects have proven 
exceptionally popular. In Missouri, entire neighborhoods and towns are 
physically moving out of harm's way. Many farmers have abandoned their 
dangerous riverside operations and, with the help of the Government, 
have rebuilt their lives on higher ground.
  However, a number of flood victims were not eligible for these early 
programs. While our efforts to repair the damage caused by the Great 
Flood were well-intentioned, they were not complete. Many Missouri 
landowners with damaged land did not qualify for Federal buyouts 
because their property was too heavily damaged, a condition that was 
certainly not their fault.
  A few weeks ago, Senator Max Baucus proposed a $100 million Missouri 
River floodway project to buy flood damaged property from willing 
sellers in the Missouri River Valley as part of the Water Resources 
Development Act. Landowners who had not been eligible for past buyouts 
and were left with useless property choked with silt would have 
received assistance under this bill. I repeatedly lobbied Members of 
the House to support this vital assistance plan for the people of 
Missouri.
  Senator Baucus included in the bill some changes in the way 
floodplains are managed, ostensibly to reduce damage from future 
flooding. The Senator listened to objections to some of his efforts, 
and met many of the concerns, including many I held. For example, I 
would never have supported this bill had it made any changes at all in 
the way the Missouri River is currently managed. I am fighting for 
ample water flow levels for the Missouri River, to protect our farmers, 
shippers, and to ensure the basic economic viability of the downstream 
States.

  I supported this bill as a noble promise to deliver assistance to 
Missourians who had been waiting, some patiently and some desperately, 
for the Government to help them as it had helped all other flood 
victims. I supported the Missouri River floodway project as the last, 
best hope for many Missouri landowners during this Congress. Some 
Senators disagreed, feeling that the floodplain management changes were 
more important than the much-needed aid for Missouri farmers. Thus, the 
bill containing the $100 million Missouri floodway project was 
unfortunately killed using a Senate rule.
  That project, and the future of Missouri flood victims, were seized 
by politics. Flood victims are now hostage in a wide-ranging debate 
over the future of the Missouri River.
  That debate can be helpful if it is conducted honestly. It is not 
helpful or fair that flood victims have to wait for the conclusion of 
the debate to receive sorely needed assistance.
  I had hoped that we could enter next Congress knowing that the work 
of recovering from the Great Flood of 1993 was complete and we could 
turn our attention to the future. I wanted to begin work on a 
constructive plan that allows use of our floodplains while protecting 
the lives and property of people within the floodplain. Such a plan 
would nurture the diverse ecosystems found in and along our river, and 
would further protect the interest of the American taxpayer by 
emphasizing preparation for future flooding.
  By failing to act on a bill that would begin reform of our floodplain 
management rules, Congress has failed to provide assistance to those 
flood victims still waiting for aid, and has failed to protect those 
who still live and work in our Nation's many floodplains from the 
destruction of future floods. In addition, we have not made changes 
necessary to guarantee to the American taxpayers that they will not 
have to bear the enormous cost of another flood recovery effort.
  We must commit ourselves to addressing each of these questions 
swiftly, knowing that people still desperately await our help and that 
we must demonstrate leadership in order to protect the lives and 
livelihoods of these people from waters that will rise again. Decency 
and common sense require no less.
  Despite the good-hearted but haphazard efforts of the Federal 
Government many people who had their places of work and their homes 
swept away by the rolling waters are still in need of help. Hundreds of 
landowners in my State, many of whom have their lands covered by 
several feet of river sand, want to voluntarily sell and move out of 
harm's way. Federal buyout programs, contrary to expectation, have been 
enormously popular. Why can't we extend buyout to cover these willing 
sellers?
  Unfortunately, conflicting political agendas have created an 
adversarial atmosphere that too often labels people and sets them 
against each other: Environmentalists against farmers, river dwellers 
against Government officials and so on. Rather than cooperating to 
first complete the recovery process for flood victims and then set the 
future of floodplain management, we have become bogged down in 
suspicion, trapped by a web of peripheral detail.
  Most reasonable individuals with an interest in river policy agree 
that both commercial and environmental concerns must be included with 
our discussions about the future. If we completely stop living and 
farming along the river our economy will suffer irreparable damage. If 
we choke and constrict our rivers to death, innumerable ecosystems 
supported by the rivers will die with them.
  One thing is sure: If we do not cooperate in planning the future of 
our rivers and floodplains, people will suffer from our stubborn 
neglect. They will suffer with lost homes and businesses, in lost 
lives, and the American taxpayer will pay the price for uninsured land 
and poor hazard mitigation.
  The Great Flood of 1993 demonstrated that our patchwork of levees and 
building codes, the scattered coverage of the National Flood Insurance 
Program, and the lack of any meaningful planning and control creates 
trouble for all our constituents; 70,000 homes were destroyed outright 
by the waters, hundreds of thousands more were damaged, 70 million 
dollars worth of damage was done to public roads and highways in my 
State. Agricultural losses of $1.8 billion were posted in Missouri 
alone; 840 of 1,456 Missouri levees were damaged, breached, or 
overtopped.
  The bill for most of this damage, which amounted to tens of billions 
of dollars, was paid by taxpayers throughout Missouri and throughout 
America. If we do not act to prevent this level of damage from 
occurring again there will be another bill due, then another.
  For the sake of the small business owners who spent a tortured year 
trying to wring help from an unresponsive bureaucracy, for the widow 
who returned to her farmhouse to find 5 feet of mud in her living room, 
for the good-natured souls who toiled in driving rain and beating sun 
to save the homes of people they never met before, I hope that we can 
come together and see that the cost in broken lives and homes is never 
so high again.

                          ____________________