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

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26 The Nation’s Responses to Flood Disasters: A Historical Account localities made the list. The following year, the Corps authorized the creation of a Floodplain Management Services (FPMS) Branch in the Planning Division of the Office of Chief of Engineers. George Phippen, a geographer with considerable experience in water resource planning, was appointed branch chief. THE U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY’S ROLE Historically, the USGS has been actively involved in flood issues and problems. Flood data are documented in a multitude of USGS observations, reports, and publications. Starting in the mid-1950s, the agency played an important role in developing procedures still used for estimating flood risk at a particular site. The USGS was also involved in early flood inundation mapping efforts at the national level by helping to initiate the change from reporting only elevations and discharges of floods to publishing more interpretative information, such as areas covered by floods of selected frequencies. For instance, in reporting data on the floods of 1959 in Ohio, the USGS adopted for the first time, flood-inundation maps as another means of depicting flood information. Publishing flood-inundation maps delineating boundaries of inundated areas, providing water surface profiles, and showing flood-frequency relations became a standard means of reporting about specific floods. 70 In 1954, USGS employee Walter Langbein designed a report format consisting of a map with pertinent text in the margins. This report became Hydrologic Investigations Atlas No. 1 (HA-1). The successful format was repeated when HA-14 “Floods at Topeka, Kansas” was published in 1959, the first of a series of flood atlases for that area. A second flood atlas, HA-39, “Floods near Chicago Heights, Illinois,” followed in 1960. The third flood atlas published in 1961, HA-41, “Floods at Boulder, Colorado,” summarized results of a special study of Boulder Creek at Boulder, Colorado, in which areas inundated by floods of several frequencies were constructed synthetically from past records and physical surveys of the flood plain. Interest in the flood maps grew, and cooperative programs with the USGS to map metropolitan areas rapidly increased in the early 1960s. Following the 1959 flood, the Ohio Legislature appropriated funds to finance a cooperative agreement with the USGS to prepare flood atlases for the 12 cities that had suffered the most severe flooding. After HA-39 was published in 1960, the Northeastern Illinois Metropolitan Planning Commission entered into an agreement to cooperatively finance a flood-inundation mapping project for six counties in northeastern Illinois, involving the preparation of flood atlases for 43 7.5-minute quadrangles. The project was later expanded, and 31 additional atlases were completed by 1973. By the end of 1966, USGS had prepared 69 flood atlases at sites in 17 states. 70 Hudson, H. H. and J. S. Cragwell, Jr., A History of the Water Resources Division, U.S. Geological Survey, (vol. VI, 1996).
The 1930s to the 1960s: Broadening Solutions to the Nation’s Flood Problems 27 THE SOIL CONSERVATION SERVICE PREPARES LOCAL FLOOD STUDIES Section 6 of the Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act of 1954 provided the legislative authority for the SCS to prepare local flood hazard studies. However, the agency only began preparing the studies after a Bureau of the Budget Task Force on Federal Flood Control Policy (see below, “Bureau of the Budget Task Force”) recommended it in 1966. By the end of the decade, the SCS had resources to prepare flood hazard information studies and had technical assistance to offer local officials. 71 Thus, the SCS joined the TVA, the Corps, and the USGS in these efforts to define flood dangers. In addition, the National Weather Service and the Delaware and Susquehanna River Basin Commissions prepared a small number of studies in the 1960s and 1970s. Floodplain management measures could now be put into practice. Engineering techniques were available to produce maps showing areas inundated by floods of various magnitudes and to define a floodway, along with the provision of other needed flood data. SEVERAL STATES LEAD THE WAY IN FLOODPLAIN MANAGEMENT Murphy reported in 1958 that only seven states (Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Washington) had enacted and were enforcing state floodplain management regulations, principally for narrow channel encroachment areas. Six of these programs were adopted in response to catastrophic floods. Based on his evaluation of the regulations, he concluded “that they are not in major conflict with existing developments nor unduly restrictive to new developments.” 72 However, by the late 1960s, a number of states had statutes regulating broader flood hazard areas: 73 • A 1962 Washington state statute provided that the state establish flood control zones when data were available for that purpose. Any activity to construct, reconstruct, or modify any structure or works affecting flood waters within any established zone required a state permit. • A 1965 California state code encouraged “local levels of government to plan land use regulations to accomplish floodplain management and to provide state assistance and guidance as appropriate.” 74 71 Buie, Eugene C., A History of Water Resource Activities of the United States Department of Agriculture, (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service, 1979). 72 Murphy, p. 16. 73 Regulation of Flood Hazard Areas To Reduce Flood Losses, (U.S. Water Resources Council, vol. 1, Parts I-IV, 1971), pp. 60, 127-175. 74 Ibid., p. 171.
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Page 8 and 9: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to th
Page 10 and 11: CONTENTS National Weather Service .
Page 13 and 14: OVERVIEW The floods of the 1990s an
Page 15 and 16: 1 PRE-20TH CENTURY: ISSUES OF FEDER
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Page 19 and 20: 2 THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY: A GROWING
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APPENDIX B: SELECT PUBLICATIONS, FE
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GLOSSARY ASFPM, “the Association
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