The Nation's Responses To Flood Disasters: A Historical Account

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The Nation’s Responses to Flood Disasters: A Historical Account
White penned his Doctor of Philosophy dissertation, entitled Human Adjustment
to Floods, 37 in 1942. He based the document on his own views and experiences, his
knowledge of the history of the government programs with which he had been involved,
and the evidence and ideas surrounding floodplain management that surfaced within the
Water Resources Committee. In it, he characterized the prevailing national policy as
“essentially one of protecting the occupants of floodplains against floods, of aiding them
when they suffer flood losses, and of encouraging more intensive use of floodplains.” 38
He instead advocated “adjusting human occupancy to the floodplain environment so as to
utilize most effectively the natural resources of the floodplain, and at the same time, of
applying feasible and practicable measure for minimizing the detrimental impacts of
floods.” 39
Many were convinced that his concepts offered a real alternative to existing flood
control practices. Among those were Harvard professor Arthur Maass who, in his 1951
book Muddy Waters, 40 presented White’s concepts to a broader audience. In 1955, two
noted hydrologists, William G. Hoyt and Walter B. Langbein, also endorsed White’s
concepts in their book Floods. The authors traced the evolution of public flood control
policies, laid out current problems, and suggested that changes were needed. “Our
present policy towards floods hinges essentially on water control,” they said. “It seems
imperative to have, in addition to a policy of control, a comprehensive national policy of
flood management.” 41 Gilbert F. White later characterized their work as the first to
coherently pull together the scientific information about floods, an effort respected by
scientific groups. It is widely accepted that Gilbert F. White’s seminal study stimulated
the interest and set the course for the emergence and evolution, in ensuing decades, of
broader approaches to flood problems.
LAND USE PLANNING: A. J. GRAY, JIM GODDARD, AND THE TVA
EXPERIMENT
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was the first federal agency to broadly
apply alternative approaches to control flood damage, choosing to add land use planning
methods to the popular structural measures already used to control the paths of
floodwaters. Congress created the TVA in 1933 as a government corporation armed with
power to plan, build, and operate multipurpose water resource development projects
within the 40,000 square mile Tennessee River basin. 42 Having basically completed its
initial mission of bringing about the maximum degree of flood control feasible along the
37 White, Human Adjustment to Floods, A Geographic Approach to the Flood Problem in the United States, (University of Chicago, Department of Geography,
1942).
38 White, p. 32.
39 White, p. 2.
40 Maass, Arthur, Muddy Waters, The Army Engineers and the Nation’s Rivers. (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951).
41 Hoyt, William and Walter Langbein, Floods, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955), pp. 91-113.
42 President Roosevelt proposed extension of the TVA concept to other basins such as the Arkansas, White, and Red, but Congress was never willing to extend
such authority or duplicate it.