With all the flooding along the Missouri River, our Senator has assured us there will be Federal hearings into what happened and how it can be prevented in the future. Here are some questions I hope they will answer:
1. I know the top 3 feet of the Oahe Reservoir is called the Exclusive Flood Zone and marks the elevation at which flood control becomes a priority. How was it [mistakenly] determined that 3 feet of storage was enough for flood control?
2. What zone is immediately below the Exclusive Flood Zone? How deep is this zone? What added weight/preference is given to flood control issues while operating in this zone? And what measures at intervention may be taken in this zone if flooding appears imminent?
3. When the dams were designed back in the 1950’s, what criteria was used to determine their maximum outlet works release capacity?
4. What happened to the maps that showed the width of the Missouri River water channel when conditions approached the dams' designed maximum water capacity? Were these maps inaccurate, or did insurance and mortgage companies and cities and states just blatantly turn a blind eye to them?
5. How did it happen that permanent structures were built on land subject to flooding by design? Structures such as Interstate 29, water treatment facilities, businesses, and homes?
6. When decisions to build within potentially flooded areas were made (such as the luxurious housing development constructed in the Dakota Dunes in South Dakota), who was determined to be liable for the loss when flooding occurred? (BTW, when this development was created, the potential for flooding was raised.)
7. What accountability exists for government officials who made decisions that knowingly put people and property and infrastructure at substantial risk? (I am referring to numerous decisions to encroach upon areas calculated to be part of the river channel when the dams entered their Exclusive Flood Control Zones.)
8. For consideration of assistance, why does FEMA require people to report accurate detailed flood loses within 30 days of the loss, when the damage is hidden by flood water for more than 60 days (a requirement that is impossible to meet)? Why is a home that does not have HVAC, running water, or sewer for 2 months due to flooding not considered a major loss? Or a home with 6 feet of water in the basement for months? Simularly, why do home owner's insurance policies not cover items not removed from flooded homes (due to "failure to try to limit losses"), but also not cover items that are removed (due to item not being kept at the homeowners residence)?
2 comments:
Some of your questions are answered in an Army Corps of Engineers file called MissouriRiverFlooding6Jun2011.pdf. I can't find a current link to it on the ACE website anymore, but a Google search on the file name will turn up a few copies. It provides some pretty good information.
From what I can tell, the ACE followed their annual operating plan (http://www.nwd-mr.usace.army.mil/rcc/reports/pdfs/finalAOP2010-2011.pdf) for this year down to the letter as long as they could. The problem is that the annual operating plan was based primarily on average historical data from 1898 through 2006. The closest thing to a "worst case scenario" that was evaluated was based on the upper and lower 10% data points, with little to no consideration for record-breaking (let alone record-obliterating) years. What's more, the annual operating plan spent a whole lot more time discussing contingencies for an unusually dry season than it did for an unusually wet season.
The plan seemed to look at numbers as a purely statistical model, as if weather is a bunch of random, computer-generated events rather than an ever-changing force of nature. One of the internal e-mails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act even questioned the practice of relying too much on averaging, and suggested paying more attention to existing snowpack and weather's tendency to operate in wet/dry cycles.
That said, flooding was inevitable this year. The question is how much "less bad" it could have or should have been. What frustrates me the most is that the Army Corps of Engineers knew things were going to flood, and they sat on that information instead of notifying communities ahead of time. Additionally, they kept announcing different (and increasing) release rates even though they knew internally that the true release rate would be much, much higher. I understand the position the Corps was in, especially considering all the legislation and whatnot that went on before, but they failed utterly in proactively notifying the public of the impending disaster.
By the way, I have heard numerous comments about how much worse the flood would have been had the dams not been in place. My response to that is two-fold. First, those damns have been in place for decades, and a lot of past decisions were made with that knowledge (i.e. calculated risks). Second, sure the flood would have been "uncontrolled", but it likely wouldn't have dragged on and on for months, either. Pick your poison.
I forgot to comment on your FEMA question. When they announced individual assistance was available, I applied online. The inspector that came out specifically told me that since my application was in the system, if I uncovered additional flood-related damage at a later date, I would be able to go back to FEMA and update them with the new information. I have obviously not put this to the test, but it makes perfect sense. After all, even though the river itself is finally receding, groundwater is still high and continuing to present a threat.
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