People can choose to live wherever they want as long as they take the
risk entirely on themselves. I just don't want to subsidize their flood
insurance coverage or the Army Corps of Engineers to pay for their choices.
Chuck Norcutt
Ken Norton wrote:
>> It's very reasonable to put your farm fields in the flood plain. It's
>> also reasonable to have a dock on the river to load and unload boats.
>> But putting your house and business on the flood plain or on the beach
>> in hurricane territory is just asking for trouble.
>
>
>
> Or living where there are earthquakes, fires, mudslides, volcanoes, tidal
> waves, tornadoes, termites, extreme cold climates, extreme hot climates,
> extreme rainy climates, extreme dry climates, sand, rock, bees, bugs,
> spiders and snakes should also be outlawed.
>
> One can be critical of locating a town within a floodplain, and at first
> glance it does seem a bit stupid. But when you consider the infrastructure
> which is designed to protect it, it's not unreasonable. Historically,
> floods do occur in these locations, but the work that is being done on the
> Red River this week to protect the towns is exactly how things are supposed
> to work. The levies are just fine for all of the normal, expected flooding,
> and when the river is exceeding "normal" highs, people are doing what they
> can to protect their homes and businesses. The infrastructure allows for
> the raising of the levies under these extreme times and the sandbagging
> technology--as crude as it may seem, is actually pretty good.
>
> The catastrophes happen when the infrastructure fails! But how is this any
> different than when any other infrastructure fails? Water mains
> break--should we outlaw city water? Electrical shorts cause fires--should
> be outlaw electricity? Bridges fail--should we outlaw transportation?
> Maybe we should outlaw airlines because of geese.
>
> Let's put this into perspective, though. The flooding currently experienced
> on the Red River is EXTREME. This isn't normal flood levels--these are
> levels which have never been seen by white man--and there are examples of
> native communities which were also destroyed by floods, so they didn't
> always get it right, either. The previous flood, back in the '90s, was a
> result of the levies not being high enough and the sandbagging operation
> wasn't able to make up the difference. Since that time, the levies were
> raised, improved and redesigned for times such as this. The fact that the
> levies have held so far is testament to this success. Even at that, the
> levies are designed to hold these extremely high waters for only a week to
> two weeks before seepage finally weakens the levies enough that they can
> fail. (But compare this to the levy failures in New Orleans which occured
> immediately).
>
> This flooding is NOT normal--just as a category five hurricane hitting a
> major coastal city and then causing massive flooding as far north and west
> as Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ontario isn't normal.
>
> AG
--
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