Thanks Again, Mr. Reagan

Midwest flooding is nothing new. Mark Twain wrote about it in Life on the Mississippi; just over 80 years ago, the great flood of 1927  inundated 16.6 million acres of land and caused $40 million in damage and claimed 426 lives. This flood, which cost a huge amount in its day, spurred good flood-control practices. Levees built in its wake are still in service today. In fact, the levees built in the years after 1927 around New Orleans withstood Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

Fast-forward to the 1980s and the reign of the patron saint of the neoconservative movement, Ronald Reagan. While many remember his governmental cost-cutting measures like trying to make ketchup a vegetable in school lunches, some of his less-publicized cost-cutting work went on in the area of infrastructure. The Reagan administration directed the Army Corps of Engineers to institute a cost-to-benefit ratio of 1 to 1 for flood control measures. In lay terms, every dollar the federal government spends on flood control projects must protect $1 worth of property.

The standard had serious effects on the quality and quantity of flood control projects. The levees built on the lower Mississippi during and since the Reagan administration failed during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The best work constructed under the Reagan standards provides protection against 100-year floods. These are floods that have about a 1 per cent chance of occurring each year. The current situation in the Midwest is a 500-year event. Very little, if any, flood control infrastructure is built to withstand such an assault, although the Association of State Floodplain Managers recommends that urban flood-control measures be built to withstand 500-year events (Kansas.com).

Basing flood protection on economics affects everyone. Businesses like railroads and refineries and upscale private property, for instance, merit flood-control measures, while crops and less-expensive private property do not. Where property does rate protection, flood control measures may endanger less-valuable upstream property, by increasing the area of the floodplain and the likelihood of inundation. The protection of valuable property at the expense of those who can least afford their losses is an age-old problem. But the costs do not stop there.

In 2006, Timothy Kerner, vice-president of the West Jefferson Levee District went before Congress to ask that the mandated cost-to-benefit ratio be waived for projects in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. During Hurricane Rita, flood waters trapped residents and prevented them from evacuating. Poor flood control costs lives. In 1927, far fewer people lived within the endangered area than today. The potential for loss-of-life is enormous compared to the early 20^th century.

Because agricultural land is not considered valuable enough to protect, as much as 10 per cent of this year's corn and soybean crops may be wiped out. Commodities markets, already feeling upward pressure from demand for bio-fuels have begun to see rising prices. The price of a bushel of corn has already doubled since last year to $8. This is good news to some farmers, but not such good news for consumers when it reaches the grocery store.

Much of the U.S. food supply depends on corn. The single largest expense for meat, dairy and egg producers is corn for feed. Prices of everything from poultry to soda and candy rise with the price of corn and soybeans. Consumers already feeling the bite of increased corn prices should prepare themselves for higher costs to come.

Some suggest that the 100-year floodplain should only be used for agriculture, removing all businesses and residences, and forbidding further development. This solution, however, is still subject to the 1:1 cost-benefit ratio imposed in the 1980s, meaning that areas of lesser monetary value would remain ineligible for such evacuation.

Elsewhere, in flood-prone developed nations outside of the United States, standards are much less geared to economics and much more focused on preserving life and property. In the Netherlands, ocean flood protection is designed to handle events that may happen only once in 10,000 years; those for river floods range from events expected to occur once every 2,500 years to once every 100 years.

One solution would be to require those who receive the greatest benefits from flood-control infrastructure to bear its costs, allowing the feds to lower that cost-to-benefit ratio to cover regular people. This is an unlikely scenario given the current pro-business political climate. However, if the government will not protect citizens, they should protect themselves. Until a solution is found, the best advice may be not to build or buy in a floodplain.