Development Rises on St. Louis Area Flood Plains

[Gman]

ST. LOUIS, May 14 — Miles and miles of bigger and stronger levees have been built along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers since the deadly floods of 1993, and millions of dollars have been spent on drainage improvements.

Yet as the rush of water that caused the Missouri River to overflow its banks and submerge dozens of towns last week rolled toward St. Louis on Monday, attention was turned to a metropolitan region that since 1993 has seen runaway residential and commercial development in the rivers’ flood paths.
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Faith in the levees seems to trump other concerns here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/15/us/15flood.html?ex=1336881600&en=6a8db6d32dac7f31&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

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St. Louis better hope there's not a Republic president when the levees finally burst.

[Strelnikov_]

1. “It’s not going to flood here for another 100 years”

The location was a selling point for Ken Snider, a high school teacher from St. Louis.
“It’s not going to flood here for another 100 years,” Mr. Snider said, “and I won’t be around by then.”

Hope he's not a math teacher, because actually, it is a 1/100 chance any given year.

And if the levees are designed at the 500 yr. event you have a 1/500 chance any given year. So, if you are behind a 500 yr. design levee, you have a 1/500 chance of being wiped out any given year.

Kinda changes the perception, doesn't it.

Not to mention that I am seeing shifts as the period of record in the probability models are updated. What was a 500 yr.
design in 1995 may well be a 100-200 yr. design in the near future.


Alan Dooley, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, St. Louis District, said people, like water, had certain natural inclinations. “People have a tendency to locate near water,” Mr. Dooley said. “These people vote; they pay taxes. It’s kind of difficult to go through with a broad brush and say, ‘You all ought to get out of here.’ ”

And who pays when all that property is wiped out, which is guaranteed to occur someday?