The fight for floodplains

Before Hurricane Sandy struck this fall, the National Flood Insurance Program was already about $17.8 billion in debt — an amount that will surely grow as Sandy-related claims are settled.

But floodplain development has ecological consequences, too, which are the crux of lawsuits that have been filed against the EPA up and down the West Coast.

Lisa Stiffler reports for InvestigateWest in the current issue of High Country News:

“Every time it rains,” she says, “you’re stressing.” At least five times since she and her husband, Brian, moved here, heavy rains have sent the river raging over its banks. After a 1995 flood, they raised the house on a 9-foot-tall concrete foundation. Then a 2003 flood dumped enough mud in their basement to fill 60 wheelbarrows. “Goopy, gloppy, sticky stuff,” she says. “It’s horrible.”

Many of her neighbors’ houses are also perched on stacked foundations, and attempts have been made to barricade the river with levees. But the most effective flood-protection measures have proven to be strict rules on reconstruction and a ban on new building enacted by the state decades ago, restrictions that apply only to a handful of the state’s most flood-prone areas.

Now the National Wildlife Federation and other environmental groups want to see stronger development controls for more Western floodplains. It’s increasingly clear that construction in floodplains is not only dangerous for people, it also harms habitat for salmon and other animals protected by the Endangered Species Act, including orca, Mexican spotted owls, jaguar and two species of springsnails. And the anxiety over floodplain construction is likely to rise as climate change raises flood risks.

Read Lisa's full story at High Country News.