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

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The Nation’s Responses to Flood Disasters: A Historical Account
advice fell on deaf ears. The first administrator, George Bernstein, convinced that
Congress wanted a national program established promptly, blanketed the nation with this
new program. 83
Congress established the NFIP as a “quid-pro-quo” program. Through it, relief
from the impacts of flood damages in the form of federally-backed flood insurance
became available to participating communities contingent on flood loss reduction
measures embodied in state and local floodplain management regulations. Occupants of
existing structures in floodprone areas would benefit from subsidized 84 flood insurance
premiums, but new floodplain occupants would have to pay actuarially-based premiums.
Those already living in the floodplain likely did not understand the flood risk involved in
their locational decisions, but future occupants would through information provided by
the NFIP. The program would be strictly voluntary in terms of community participation
and individual purchase of insurance. As history would reveal, the NFIP would
ultimately have a profound impact in two important areas: first, by accelerating the
identification of floodprone areas on maps, and; second, in providing incentives for state
and local units of government to enact measures to regulate development in these
identified areas.
Passage of the National Flood Insurance Act (Title XIII of the Housing and
Urban Development Act of 1968) marked an important change in federal flood control
policy. Adler, in his article Addressing Barriers to Watershed Protection, 85 stated that in
theory it represented a quantum shift in policy. Primary responsibility for managing the
floodplains still remained with local government, but now development was to occur
consistent with the flood risk. The act was to return the cost for location decisions back
to the landowner and to account for the total cost in any decision regarding occupancy or
use of flood hazard areas, thereby shifting the burden from the taxpayer.
The FIA managers came from the insurance industry and established an
actuarially sound program. Insurance views and considerations drove many of the early
program measures, such as initial determinations of flood hazard areas. A number of
federal agencies resented the program because it impinged upon traditional program
areas. 86 In addition, countless communities were not ready to accept the program’s
requirement for floodplain management.
Congress tasked the FIA to carry out studies to determine local flood hazard
areas within which flood insurance provisions and appropriate land use regulations would
be applied. The FIA adopted the 1 percent annual chance as a minimum national
standard for floodplain management, based upon a recommendation of a special review
committee of national experts that met at the University of Chicago in December 1968.
83 Reuss, Water Resources People and Issues, p. 55.
84 Subsidized in the form of payment from other policyholders.
85 Adler, Robert W., “Addressing Barriers to Watershed Protection,” Environmental Law, 25(1995), p. 1034.
86 Thomas interview, 13 October 1999.