FLOOD04846

• County: Otero
• Community: La Junta
• Basin: Arkansas
• Title: Local Pre-disaster Flood Hazard Mitigation Plan
• Date: 10/1/1998
• Prepared For: La Junta
• Prepared By: CWCB
• Floodplain - Doc Type: Flood Mitigation/Flood Warning/Watershed Restoration

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Preface

There will continue to be flood disasters in Colorado in the future, Their impacts will depend
largely upon where they occur. In areas of large population, the potential for damage is generally
greater while in less populated rural areas the damages are usually smaller, at least in dollar amounts.

In the past, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA),
the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB), the Colorado Office
of Emergency Management (OEM) and other organizations have
responded to disasters, providing much assistance to people in
terms of food, shelter, clothing and restoration of public and
private facilities. Since these efforts are vitally important,
they will continue.

Ifwe do no more than respond to disasters, the problems will come back and we will not have
learned from our mistakes or made anything better. Mitigation means that we are going to learn from
past mistakes and that we aren't going to repeat them. FEMNs newly created Flood Mitigation
Assistance Program (FMAP) will go a long ways to accomplishing just that. The program fund will
allow communities to develop Pre-Disaster Flood HOZIUd Mitigation Plans. The plans will contain
strategies, approaches, actions and recommendations for projects which, when implemented, will
mitigate and reduce future flood losses. Long range planning is one of the key ways to break the
disaster -recovery-disaster cycle. It will insure that once a Colorado community has implemented pre-
disaster flood mitigation measures, it will be able to withstand the kind of economic distress,
endangerment to life and environmental degradation that we have seen all too often in the past.

Acknowledgment: Parts of the information contained in this document were excerpted from
the Flood Hazard Mitigation Planning Manual, Northeastern llIinois Planning Commission, 1995.
This draft document was presented in a classroom setting by Mr. French Wetmore at the 19th Annual
Conference of the Association of State Floodplain Managers in Portland, Maine on May 26, 1995.
Participation in the ASFPM provides other States and agencies the opportunity to cross-share
information and data to achieve the ultimate goal of flood hazard reduction in the United States. We
gratefully acknowledge the use of this document in preparing Colorado's manual and the benefits that
will be afforded our citizenry.

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