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TABLE: Missouri Leads the Way in Acquisition Projects FEMA REGION VII ACQUISITION PROJECTS (As of 713/95) Withdrawn or Refused 1,065 2 29 11 STATE # of Approved Projects Properties 44 5,305 3 290 13 479 25 759 MO NE KS lA Properties Purchased 2,958 37 203 305 Percent Complete 69.76 12.85 43.38 40,78 The Big Flood Buyout Program That Worked From rhe stan ,this flood was different. The water got nearly as high in some places, and nearly the same amount of land was covered. But most of the people who fled to motels, government trailers and emergency shelters in 1993 were gone this time. Many of them accepted government buyouts and moved out of the j/ood plain. .St. Louis Post-Dispatch May 28, 1995 "We must work together to design and rebuild our communities safer and out of harm's way so the cycle of disasters can be broken. " As long as the federal government is in the disaster business, the tax- supported costs of floods will remain extensive. They include reimbursement of many local government flood-fighting costs as well as those for repairs to public facilities such as roads as well as water and sewer treatment facilities. After the 1993 flood, Public Assis- tance funds allocated in Missouri equaled $130 million for 14,200 projects. The federal government also pays individual assistance which includes both grants to uninsured property- owners as well as housing assis- tance, The total costs of the 1993 flood were estimated at $4 billion in the State of Missouri. There is also the issue of flood insurance. Conventional homeowners policies normally don't cover flood damage. However, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) exists to create an insurance pool for covering such claims. Unfortunately, less than one in ten people in Missouri's floodplains had flood insurance in 1993. .James 1.. Witt II. Pay Now or Pay Later Improvements to this system are now in place. Congressional reforms now being implemented by the NFIP program dictate that, if someone received federal disaster assistance, they must carry NAP insurance or they are ineligible for future disaster aid. They also require lenders who have loaned money on structures in the flood plain to require the pur- chase of flood insurance. Public sympathy for tax-supported emergency responses to repeated river flooding waned considerably in the two years following the 1993 flood. Tolerance is dropping as it becomes clear that such factors as continued upland development and ever-rising levees conspire to make more frequent flooding the new reality. The only permanent solution then is to reduce the costs by elimi- nating the risks for damage through a proactive floodplain management program, Missouri's Buyout Program is already paying for itself. Over half of the 5,500 targeted properties were purchased in the buyout program since 1993 and, therefore, When Orna Micke/is makes her almost daily drive through old Cedar City, she sees a home she'll never have again. The house itself is gone, mowed dawn by a bulldozer. But "home" is still there. Despite the /ingering attachment, Ms, Micke/is thinks the government buyout was necessary - especially after what happened again this year. "They would have kept putting out flood insurance money, and we would have kept going back and repairing. They saved an awful lot of money. " -Jefferson City News Tribune July 1995 that many properties were unaf- fected by the 1995 event. By way of example, St. Charles County sits at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. In that county alone, the combined costs of the 1993 flood have ex- ceeded $160 million. The number of potentially occu- pied parcels of property in the 100. year floodplain purchased under the buyout program in St. Charles County was 1374. This included over 560 single family residences and three mobile home parks with 814 pads. It's estimated that the occupancy rate in those parks was 84% at the time of the 1993 flood. Residents in these repeatedly flooded parks were among the neediest from the standpoint of needing disaster assistance from both public and private sources. When the 1995 spring rains hit, causing the third worst flood of record, 1,000 fewer families (ap- proximately 2,500 people) were out of harm's way as a result of the buyout program in St. Charles County alone.