[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 62 (Tuesday, May 8, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H1931-H1932]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LIVABLE COMMUNITIES

  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, if Members care about livable 
communities, they should be encouraged with the recent discussions 
surrounding the flooding in the Upper Mississippi.
  We cannot make families safe, healthy, and economically secure unless 
we squarely address how we manage these disasters. Despite massive 
construction efforts to stave off harm over the last 40 years, losses 
adjusted for inflation are six times greater than before we started. 
The reasons are quite clear.
  First, we have often made the problems worse by our efforts to 
prevent disasters. We have channelized the rivers, we have narrowed 
them, we have reduced the capacity to carry water while they increase 
the velocity. And we leave no place for the water to go when it floods.
  Number two, we have a decided lack of careful planning for land 
around the edges of rivers and other bodies of water. Water is a magnet 
for development, especially when we implement things that appear to 
increase safety, like build more and higher sea walls and dikes. This 
has encouraged people to develop in flood plains, which by their very 
nature puts people at risk. There is a reason why they are called flood 
plains.
  Nationally, we have developed over half our Nation's wetlands with 
houses and parking lots. In some communities 90 percent or more of the 
original wetlands have disappeared, taking with it the capacity for the 
ground in low-lying areas to soak up water and to have relatively 
benign pools, ponds, and temporary lakes. The swamps, which are always 
targeted to be eliminated, were actually very effective devices to 
prevent floodwater from inflicting more damage.
  Into this volatile mix, we need to factor global climate change. 
There are some who still argue, well, we should just study it. But the 
strong consensus from the scientific community is that global warming 
and climate change is a reality. There is a very high degree of 
probability that the warming we have seen in the last century will 
continue and even accelerate. And while many people associate this with 
severe droughts and much higher temperature in urban areas and 
nighttime temperatures, there is another significant factor, extreme 
storm events. There have been many incidents recently where communities 
have set all-time records for rainfall in a 24-hour period. This 
combination of mismanaged flood protection, inappropriate development, 
and the likelihood of things getting worse in terms of increased 
precipitation makes these questions even more significant.
  There is a golden opportunity for environmentalists to join with the 
administration, for fiscal conservatives to join with people who are 
concerned about preventing human misery to agree to simple, common 
sense steps that will provide for true improvement.
  First, there ought to be an incentive, an emphasis, on prevention. We 
should not discourage or eliminate promising programs like Project 
Impact, which help people prepare to resist disasters before the fact.
  Second, there ought to be increased local responsibility. There is no 
question that local communities must bear the consequences for 
decisions they make about the location and nature of development. There 
is no question that more expensive or intrusive measures should require 
more local or State support. However, the Federal match should be 
higher for things that are going to be preventative in nature while 
subsidy should be reduced or eliminated for things that are more likely 
to make it worse. Local communities should implement sound land-use 
planning and building codes to help themselves.
  There is no excuse to put hog waste lagoons in flood plains, to not 
have reasonable building requirements for window covering for areas 
that are subject to extreme tropical storm damage, or to allow people 
to maintain a residence in repeatedly flooded areas. All these people 
should be given clear signals that they are going to have to accept 
responsibility to mitigate these clearly avoidable damages.
  Finally, a simple, common sense step should be to reform the flood 
insurance program to eliminate Federal subsidy for repetitive flood-
loss payments.

[[Page H1932]]

  It is critical that we not make this into a political tug of war at a 
time when there is consensus in the scientific community, 
environmentalists, the professionals who work in disaster mitigation 
about what will work, what will make things better, what will keep 
people out of harm's way. We need to work cooperatively to make our 
communities more livable with a better match between private 
responsibility and government policy at all levels.

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