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

INTRODUCTION

The time has come to face the fact that this Nation can no longer afford the high costs of natural
disasters. We can no longer afford the economic costs to the American taxpayer, nor can we afford
the social costs to our communities and individuals.

Throughout the spring, summer, and fall of 1993, the
people of the United States were faced with pictures of
the devastation wrought on the Midwest by what
became known as "The Great Flood of 1993." For
nearly six decades, the nation had labored to reduce the
impacts of floods, yet within a few months tens of
thousands of homes were damaged, and the lives of
hundreds of thousands of Americans disrupted. Acre
upon acre of some of the nation's richest farmland lay
fallow. Why did this happen? What caused the flood?
Did human intervention over the years exacerbate the
situation? What should the nation be doing to prevent a
repetition of the 1993 event? The Administration
Floodplain Management Task Force, a part of the
Clinton Administration's Flood Recovery Task Force,
headed by Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy,
established the Interagency Floodplain Management
Review Committee to seek answers to these questions
and to make recommendations.

The charter oCthe Review Committee (see Appendix A)
assigns it the mission to:

. Delineate the major causes and
consequences of the 1993 flooding;

. Evaluate the performance of existing
floodplain management and related watershed
management programs; and

James L. Witt
Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency
Testimony before Congress, October 27, 1993

. Make recommendations to the Task Force
on changes in current policies, programs, and activities
of the federal government that would most effectively
achieve risk reduction, economic efficiency, and
environmental enhancement in the floodplaiu and related
watersheds.

The Review Committee consisted of federal engineers
and physical, social, and biological scientists who
contributed technical and institutional knowledge iu the
fields of flood damage-reduction and river basin
ecosystem management. Of the 3 I-member Review
Committee, 15 members were located in Washlngtou,
D, C., and 16 formed the Scientific Assessment and
Strategy Team (SAST), which operated from the Earth
Resources Observation System (EROS) center at Sioux
Falls, South Dakota. The SAST was chartered by the
White House in November 1993 "to provide scientific
advice and assistance to officials responsible for making
decisions with respect to flood recovery in the upper
Mississippi River Basin." It was incorporated into the
Review Committee in January 1994 to serve as its
research arm for scientific analysis. For a full listing of
Review Committee members and their parent agencies,
see Appendix B.

The Review Committee began its work in January
1994, focusing on federal agency briefings and
consultations with other levels of government to gain a
better understanding of the complex intergovernmenral
system of responsibilities and decisionmaking in

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