FLOOD09407

• County: Statewide
• Basin: Statewide
• Title: Sharing the Challenge: Floodplain Management into the 21st Century
• Date: 6/1/1994
• Prepared For: Administration Floodplain Management Task Force
• Prepared By: Interagency Floodplain Mmanagement Review Committee
• Floodplain - Doc Type: Community File

. To provide integrated, hydrologic,
hydraulic, and ecosystems management of the upper
Mississippi River basin, the Administration should:

Establish upper Mississippi River Basin and
Missouri River Basin commissions to deal with
basin-level program coordination;

Assign responsibility, in consultation with the
Congress, to the Mississippi River Commission
(MRC), for integrated management of flood
damage reduction, ecosystem management, and
navigation on the upper Mississippi River and
tributaries; expand MRC membership to
include representation from the Department of
the Interior; assign MRC responsibility for
development of a plan to provide long-term
control and maintenance of sound federally
built and federally supported levees along the
main stems of the Mississippi and Missouri
rivers; this support would be contingent on
meeting appropriate engineering,
environmental,and social standards.

Seek authorization from the Congress to
establish an Upper Mississippi River and
Tributaries project for management of the
federal flood damage reduction and navigation

EXECUlTVES~ARY

'~
j :~
:~
I,
.'
Iii
I'
,I
I
:!
'.
!ft
II
~
~
~
(I

activities in the upper Mississippi River Basin;

Establish the upper Mississippi River Basin as
an additional national cross-agency Ecosystem
Management Demonstration Project; and

Charge the Department of the Interior with
conducting an ecosystems needs analysis of the
upper Mississippi River Basin.

. To provide timely gathering and
dissemination of the critical water resources information
needed for floodplain management and disaster
operations, the Administration should:

Establish an infonnation clearing house at
USGS to provide federal agencies and state and
local activities the information already gathered
by the federal government during and
following the 1993 flood and to build on the
pioneering nature of this effort; and

Exploit science and technology to support
monitoring, analysis, modeling, and the
development of decision support systems and
geographic infonnation systems for floodplain
activities.

STRUCTURE OF THE REVIEW

.
,

Throughout the spring, summer, and fall of 1993, the
people of the United States were faced each night with
pictures of the devastation wrought on the midwestern
United States by the GreatFlood of 1993. For nearly
six decades, the nation had labored to reduce the
impacts of floods, yet the toll in lives lost, homes
damaged, and property destroyed was enormous. Why
had this happened? What caused the flood? Had
human intervention over time exacerbated the situation?
What should the nation be doing to prevent a repetition?
To answer these questions, the Administration
Floodplain Management Task Force, part of the
Administration Flood Recovery Task Force headed by
Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy, established the
Interagency Floodplain Management Review

Committee, a group of 31 professionals assigned to
federal agencies with responsibilities in the water
resources arena.

II
'I
;.'
I.

'~
'F.!,

The Review Committee conducted its activity from
January through June 1994 in Washington and
throughout the Midwest, Working through the offices
of the governors of the nine flood-affected states, the
Review Committee met with state and local officials and
visited over 60 locations. The Review Committee also
made extensive contacts with federal agencies, interest
groups, members of Congress and their staffs and
numerous private citizens who expressed an interest in
the flood. A part of the Review Committee, the
Scientific Assessment and Strategy Team, chartered in

xiii