Note: Computer-assisted journalism workshops often use this story as an example of data mapping. Journalism Accelerator interviewed Sara in 2011 about the project.
This series originally appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 27-31, 2003
By Sara Shipley of the Post-Dispatch
More than $2.2 billion worth of new development in the St. Louis area stands on land that was under water in the 1993 flood.
The building boom has brought jobs, services and tax revenue to the region, but it could lead to a more costly disaster in the future.
Flood plain development is a gamble against the river, and Missouri has rolled the dice on more land than any other state affected by the flood, according to a study done for the Post-Dispatch. In the past decade, offices, shopping centers and highways have covered at least 4,200 acres of Missouri flood plain, most of which were under water. And there’s more in the works.
Projects under way or on the drawing boards in the counties of St. Louis and
St. Charles would convert 14,000 acres of agricultural flood plain into
commercial and residential development.
Since the flood, development interests have pushed with renewed zeal to control the flood plains, which represent the biggest tracts of open, private land left in the St. Louis region. City officials and landowners have worked hand-in-hand with developers to take advantage of liberal regulations and generous public subsidies for flood plain development.
Supporters say the benefits justify what they consider to be a small chance of flooding.
“Name me a place where you wouldn’t have some risk,” says J. Wayne Oldroyd, community development director for Maryland Heights, which has designed the single biggest new flood plain development in the region on 8,000-plus acres near the Missouri River. The plan calls for 16.5 million square feet of hotels, offices, restaurants and light industry behind a reinforced levee.
“Would there be, in geological time, a point in which the river would come over that levee? Sure,” Oldroyd said. “That’s a business decision (to build in the flood plain). The market will decide whether it’s confident in putting
development there.”
Critics say the trend puts short-term economic gains ahead of long-term safety and environmental stability.
James Lee Witt, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under President Bill Clinton, predicts that the costs of new flood plain development will outweigh the benefits to society.
“If it’s in the flood plain, it’s not in a good area to develop,” Witt said. “I
don’t care how many levees you build, at some point, you will be impacted.”
Witt said that construction in flood-prone areas also makes flooding worse
elsewhere. “We’ve actually caused a lot of these problems ourselves, by not
protecting our environment so it can protect us,” he said.
Aggressive development contradicts task force
An examination by the Post-Dispatch has found that:
- Missouri’s aggressive development contradicts the recommendations
of a federal flood task force headed by respected former Army Corps of
Engineers Gen. Gerald Galloway. The 1994 Galloway Report said that new flood plain development should be avoided, levee construction should be limited, and people and buildings should be moved out of the river’s way, whenever possible. - Missouri lawmakers have declined to enact statewide flood plain
regulations, allowing communities to develop flood plains without fully
evaluating or compensating for negative effects on their neighbors. Some Midwestern states – including Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin – have stricter rules on flood plain development. - A growing body of scientific evidence has detected increased flood
heights of 3 to 12 feet on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, a trend that shows no signs of stopping. The scientists blame levees and flood plain development in part for the increase. - Increased flooding caused by new development could affect a great number of people and buildings already in the region’s flood plains. Up to 1.1 million people live in the historic flood plains of seven states in the Upper Mississippi River basin, according to the Post-Dispatch’s study. Much of this commercial and residential development is in levee-protected areas, where flood insurance is not required.
- Taxpayers subsidize flood plain development through levee construction, levee repair, disaster aid, insurance costs and infrastructure such as roads, bridges and drainage systems. In Missouri, more tax money has been funneled to flood plain construction through the use of an economic development tool called
tax-increment-financing.
“We should be ashamed of ourselves for what we’ve done with the taxpayers’
money,” said Wayne Freeman, executive director of the Great Rivers Habitat
Alliance, a conservation group based in St. Louis. “We can’t afford to
subsidize high-risk development.”
St. Peters Mayor Tom Brown, who backs flood plain development, said the St.
Louis region has enough river bottoms to support both economic development and
open space.
“St. Louis city has a flood wall. Riverport is in a flood plain. Think of the
jobs created in Earth City. It’s in a flood plain. So yes, very positive things
can be done,” he said. “In St. Charles County, probably 40 percent of the land
will (remain) in flood plain. So we’ll always have farmland and hunting
ground.”
Developments take over flood plains in Missouri
From a strip shopping center in Chesterfield Valley billed as the nation’s
largest to the high-end outlet mall being built in Hazelwood, most of the
Missouri River flood plain in St. Louis County will have been set aside for
development by the end of this year.
Bridgeton has approved plans for a 417-acre commercial park. Levee districts in
Chesterfield and Maryland Heights are in the process of raising existing levees
to the 500-year-flood level to encourage development. The Missouri Bottoms
Levee District, farther downstream, is considering the same.
Across the river in St. Charles County, the city of St. Charles has 2.3 million
square feet of new commercial space in the Mississippi River flood plain. St.
Peters has one new levee around its Old Town district and plans to build a
1,670-acre business park in the flood plain nearby. O’Fallon has designs on
annexing flood plain to the north.
Nowhere in the Midwest is this growth pattern as dramatic, according to a
satellite image analysis of development in seven states that were more affected
by flooding in 1993.
The Post-Dispatch hired Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota to conduct the
analysis. No state or federal agency keeps detailed records on flood plain
development.
The study looked at development in areas that were under water in 1993 and
development within the river’s historic boundaries, typically defined by river
bluffs.
The analysis included levee-protected areas and focused on land in and around
population centers.
The results showed that more than 3,870 acres of land in St. Louis and St.
Charles counties had been converted from fields and trees to highways,
buildings and parking lots. In Kansas City, 405 acres were developed, making a
total of about 4,275 acres in Missouri.
In Missouri, about 75 percent of the development happened on land that had been
under water in 1993.
In other states, development was limited mostly to land that didn’t flood 10
years ago. In Illinois, for example, most of the development was in those parts
of the Metro East area protected by levees that held in ’93.
It may be no surprise that Missouri developed the most flood plain land. The
state has the two biggest cities in the flood-affected area – St. Louis and
Kansas City. Both are on major rivers and have rapidly growing suburban
fringes.
Missouri also has the biggest flood plain – about 6,400 square miles, compared
with 4,755 for Illinois and 4,330 for Iowa, the next two largest, according to
the study.
Michael F. Robinson, a senior policy adviser at FEMA in Washington, said St.
Louis has an unusual set of factors that makes it a natural spot for new flood
plain development.
“You have to have a big, wide flood plain next to an urban area to make that
economically viable,” Robinson said. “It may be the only area where this kind
of development would happen.”
Elsewhere in the nation, some attempts to create similar major developments
have been rebuffed. FEMA refused to permit the 4,600-acre Green Diamond
development in South Carolina because it was too close to the Congaree River.
Missouri has a reputation for huge new levees, said Tim Searchinger, a lawyer
for Environmental Defense, an advocacy group based in New York that tracks
flood plain issues.
“The area we hear the most complaints about stupid new big things in the flood
plain is basically in Missouri,” he said. “We haven’t heard of them elsewhere.”
New stores rise on once submerged land
Missouri’s building boom might have seemed unlikely a decade ago, when the
nation’s most costly flood struck.
The five-month-long deluge covered 17,000 square miles of land in nine states
and forced the evacuation of about 54,000 people. Thousands of people helped
fill sandbags, only to lose the battle in places.
Whole towns were swallowed in a lake of brown floodwater. High water shut down
12 commercial airports, 388 sewage treatment plants and almost all bridges over
the Missouri and Mississippi rivers between St. Louis, Kansas City and
Davenport, Iowa.
Damage estimates ranged from $12 billion to $20 billion, not counting the toll
from lost productivity and disrupted lives.
By most counts, Missouri suffered the most direct damages, with at least $3
billion in losses. At the nexus of two of the most powerful rivers in the
nation, floodwater in Missouri reclaimed much of the rivers’ ancient channels,
consuming farm fields, factories and homes.
Until 1993, many Americans believed that they could keep rivers safely in place
through engineering and sheer tenacity. The flood challenged that thinking.
Government figures compiled in the flood’s wake showed that federal taxpayers
had spent about $140 billion on flood-control structures and disaster
assistance nationwide in the previous 25 years, an average of $5.6 billion each
year.
Yet flood damages in the United States have more than doubled since 1900 in
inflation-adjusted dollars, rising to more than $5 billion per year on average,
according to a National Weather Service estimate.
“That flood was, to me, the ultimate repudiation of the basic American approach
to flooding for the past 70 years,” said David Conrad of the National Wildlife
Federation, who wrote a critical report on the issue in 1998.
“It pointed out that to rely exclusively on a flood-control approach, rather
than managing our land use, means that we are ultimately putting more and more
people and property at risk.”
Galloway, the retired Corps of Engineers civil engineer who headed the White
House task force on the flood, said it shifted the nation’s collective
consciousness – at least for a while. Instead of assuming that rivers should be
dominated, people began to think about giving them room to roam.
“The United States has made a fundamental change,” he said. “Structural methods
(such as levees) don’t solve the problem by themselves.”
The federal government spent $1 billion to buy 25,000 flooded properties
nationwide to turn the land into open space.
Missouri embraced that offer more than any other state, moving more than 4,700
households permanently out of harm’s way. Illinois bought out about 3,000
properties, including a whole town.
But the buyout program was voluntary and, in Missouri, applied only to
residential property. Before long, people were thinking about moving back into
the flood plains.
“You go two to three years after a flood, and human optimism prevails over
human experience,” said Scott Faber, water resources specialist with
Environmental Defense.
Most officials consider devastating flood unlikely
Today, most city officials and developers working in the river bottoms play
down the likelihood of another devastating flood.
All the new commercial flood plain developments in St. Louis and St. Charles
counties are protected by earthen levees or built on top of plateaus of dirt
designed to withstand what’s called a 500-year flood.
A 500-year flood is one that has a 1-in-500 chance of happening in any given
year. Stated another way, that would be a 1-in-10 chance of happening over 50
years, or a 1-in-5 chance of happening over a century.
“There is always a risk of flooding,” said Mike Geisel, Chesterfield’s public
works director, who also manages the city’s flood plain development permits. “I
think the valley is reasonably safe. It could – eons in the future – flood
again.”
Modern 500-year levees are considered the gold standard of protection for major
urban areas like Kansas City and St. Louis. None has ever had a catastrophic
failure.
But in recent years, bigger floods have called even the mighty 500-year levee
into question. During the ’93 flood, most 500-year levees performed solidly.
But a 500-year levee at Riverport and a 500-year flood wall in downtown St.
Louis needed reinforcements.
And now the Corps of Engineers has proposed building a 1,000-year levee across
the Missouri River from Jefferson City. The added protection is needed because
spiraling flood levels mean the levee will offer only 500-year protection by
2031, according to the corps’ Kansas City office.
Other studies since the early 1970s have documented increasing flood levels for
similar volumes of water on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Many
researchers believe that levees and other man-made constrictions squeeze water
higher in the channel.
That means a 500-year levee might not really offer 500-year flood protection.
“Even at 500 years, somewhere a levee is going to get overtopped someday,” said
FEMA’s Robinson. “When it does happen, it’s going to be a big disaster.”
There’s also a debate over whether these new levees will make flooding worse
elsewhere by pushing water onto other property.
“You’re a fool if you don’t say it does,” said Dennis Stephens, chief of
hydrologic engineering for the corps’ St. Louis District.
The question is, how much.
The corps says that levees generally increase flooding upstream and increase
water velocity downstream, because water backs up at the levee and then shoots
downstream through a narrower opening. The agency figures the additional
flooding caused by each of its levee projects and compensates other landowners
for it. That might mean building a ring levee around a vulnerable water plant,
for example.
But some dismiss the impact of levees. The Upper Mississippi, Illinois and
Missouri Rivers Association, which represents businesses along the rivers,
believes that the impact of levees is localized and minimal. The association
wants the corps to build a uniform flood-protection system along the entire
upper Mississippi.
“Levees don’t cause floods. Rain causes floods,” executive director Heather
Hampton-Knodle said.
Others say they can engineer around the problem. St. Peters Mayor Brown said
the city has spent $1.25 million on studies for the planned commercial park.
The result is that the project “does not raise the level of the Mississippi
River one bit,” Brown said.
Federal rules permit projects in flood plain
New flood plain development is allowed under federal rules – and some say
federal policies even encourage it. Missouri lacks its own laws, leaving local
communities in charge.
Critics say FEMA’s 30-year-old rules for new flood plain development are too
lax. For instance, the National Flood Insurance Program, the basis for flood
plain management in 19,000 communities nationwide, allows development to
consume most of the flood plain.
No insurance or other precautions are required so long as the buildings are
protected from a 100-year-flood by levees, flood walls or elevation. FEMA will
even remove the protected areas from its official flood plain maps upon
request.
“Right now, our national approach is, we’re going to show you the high-risk
area and then show you how to build there,” said Larry Larson, executive
director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, based in Madison,
Wis.
Witt, the former FEMA director, wanted to raise the 100-year-flood standard to
at least a 200- or 300-year-flood level.
“We’ve overbuilt and overdeveloped in high-risk areas,” Witt said. “Water runs
off much faster than it ever did.”
FEMA’s Robinson agreed that the program isn’t perfect, but he said it reflects
a necessary compromise between preventing flood damages and respecting private
property rights.
“We estimate our flood plain management regulations have saved well over $1
billion in damages annually,” he said.
Development subsidies come under scrutiny
Since the ’93 flood, subsidies for flood plain development have come under
scrutiny.
Congress took some steps to shut off disaster aid to repeatedly flooded
property and to make communities pay a little more for their own
flood-protection systems.
But some financial incentives still exist. For example, the Corps of Engineers
pays for up to 65 percent of new levee construction and 80 percent of levee
repair after a flood.
In the case of Chesterfield Valley, the corps’ help could be worth up to $38
million of the estimated $58 million cost of raising the levee there to
500-year protection. The agency already has spent more than $1.5 million on
studies for Chesterfield and plans to pay for big-ticket construction items
later, or even reimburse local costs outright.
“We don’t make a value judgment on whether that property should be protected,”
said Alan Dooley, a spokesman for the corps’ St. Louis district. “As long as
people can show they can meet the requirements, they’ll get a permit, whether
we like building in the flood plain or not.”
The federal government has also spent billions on flood insurance and disaster
aid. The ’93 flood cost federal taxpayers $4.2 billion in direct payments, plus
$1.3 billion in insurance payments and $621 million in loans.
The flood insurance program has been largely self-sustaining since 1986, but
taxpayers have spent $1.2 billion to support it since its inception, and now
face another $1 billion bill to update old flood plain maps.
Flood insurance premiums aren’t raised no matter how often a property floods.
Steve Ellis, vice president of programs for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a
federal budget watchdog group, says this amounts to setting the same car
insurance premium for an 18-year-old in a Ferrari and a 50-year-old in a
Chevette.
“Here we are, building in these risky places, and at some point we’re going to
turn around and have to pay through the nose for these new properties,” Ellis
said.
Larry Zensinger, acting director of FEMA’s recovery division, wants to dispel
notions of unlimited government largesse. Individual families and public
entities qualify for disaster aid, but businesses are limited to low-interest
loans.
“Those people who own industrial or commercial property who tell you, don’t
worry, FEMA will bail us out, are misinformed,” Zensinger said.
Galloway says that government programs should avoid creating what he calls a
“moral hazard” – an incentive for bad behavior.
“If people are well-educated and know better, they can make decisions that are
rational,” Galloway said. “But if the government is creating programs that
induce people to take a risk, we are creating a moral hazard.”
Sen. Jim Talent, a Republican who lives in Chesterfield, says the government
should support both flood control and economic development, which in turn
improve the region’s quality of life.
“There’s a risk to an area of not creating jobs and not developing,” he said.
“I urge people who don’t like these things to remember we’re dependent on this
happening somewhere.”
Christopher Carey and Eric Heisler of the Post-Dispatch contributed to
this report.
For more stories in this series, click here.