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OJllci8 Flood insurance must be purchased whenever a federal or federally-related institution extends a loan for the pur- chase or construction of structures in FEMA-designated special flood hazard areas within a participating community. The vast increase in coverage due to this requirement portends massive outlays during the 1980's under the NFIP. How- ever, the quid pro quo for flood insur. ance availability in a community is the community's adoption and enforcement of the above-mentioned floodplain man. agement ordinances, designed to mitigate flood damage and provide for prudent use of the floodplain. In short, flood losses are rising dras- tically in the United States despite a long history of efforts to control floods through engineering structures. Flood losses are distributed widely throughout the nation. Many of these losses are in small watersheds or coastal areas which have experienced development only re- cently. Federal taxpayers are faced with ever-increasing outlays through grants and loans to flood victims and flood in- surance subsidies to property owners in flood-prone areas. More effective efforts to deter additional floodplain develop- ment are urgently needed. II. MULTI-GOVERNMENT MANAGE. MENT OF FLOODPLAINS A. Goals of Floodplain Management Clearly, the primary goal of floodplain management is to reduce the hazard of floods to life and property (Fig. 10). This entails at least three factors: (1) avoiding unwise additional develop- ment on floodplains; (2) eliminating or relocating existing floodplain develop- ment where economically feasible; and (3) avoiding hydraulic changes in the watershed that will increase water flow at times of flooding. Achievement of the first two factors within a particular community may be undermined or nullified by failure to achieve the third- by failure to prevent increased flood flows elsewhere in the watershed due to adverse policies and actions. Second, floodplain management should strive for the beneficial use of floodplains. Floodplains do not always need to be abandoned entirely. Agricul- ture, recreation, and low-intensity uses such as parking lots may be compatible with occasional flooding. Where flood- plains are to be devoted to open space or conservation purposes, planning and management is necessary. Third, floodplain management should seek to treat property owners fairly. The U.S. Constitution requires that property owners be ensured "due process of the law" and "equal protection of the law." This has been interpreted to mean that floodplain regulations, like other land use controls, must be based on sound data. It is not necessary to employ the most advanced or expensive methodol- ogy for this purpose, but a good-faith effort must be made to map the flood hazard area and to distinguish the levels of risk within it. In this manner, prop- erty owners can be treated like others with the same degree of risk. (Problems arise, of course, where properties that are similar in risk are separated by politi- cal boundaries.) Fourth, floodplain management should be viewed as one element of a comprehensive /and and water resource management effort. The goal of cutting flood losses must be viewed in the con- text of other public goals such as eco- nomic development, public safety, water quality improvement, agricultural land preservation, fish and wildlife protec- tion, recreation, tax considerations, and so forth. Again, this suggests the need for floodplain management to be con- ducted in harmony with other public programs and policies applicable at var- ious geographic scales: community, watershed, region, state, and nation. B. Techniques of Floodplain Management Much has been written on the subject of the techniques of floodplain manage- ment. For our purpose here, the major tools available are outlined in Table 1. These are listed in three categories: measures that control floodwaters di- rectly; measures that reduce the vulnera- bility to flood damage; and measures that modify the impact of flood losses. More information on these techniques can be found in the references at the end of this paper, and some of the tech- niques are illustrated in the case histories discussed in Part II of this report. 14