Flooding in Midwest

* Here is my response to those who argue that the people in the Midwest who have suffered disastrous losses from flooding deserve no government aid because they “choose” to live there.

Virtually no part of the U.S. is free from potentially destructive natural hazards. The East has hurricanes; the Midwest has floods and tornadoes; and the West has earthquakes, tidal waves and volcanoes. The vast majority of Americans live in those regions. Although we take measures to try to reduce the hazards, we also accept them as part of our “grand bargain” with nature: that the benefits usually outweigh the risks. When they don’t, Americans have always pitched in to help their less fortunate neighbors, whether by filling sandbags or by allocating part of their taxes for government aid. No one in the U.S. is immune from natural hazards. The neighbor we help today may help us tomorrow!

HENRY C. BERG

Fullerton

* The disastrous flooding along the Mississippi River has lessons for Los Angeles County. The cities of the Los Angeles County Drainage Area Alliance believe these lessons are being ignored by well-meaning supporters of a plan to dismantle the county’s flood control system.

In the 1930s, Los Angeles County suffered flooding that was tremendously destructive of property and the environment. As a result, the Army Corps of Engineers built the region’s extensive flood control system. The system was adequate to protect homes and businesses from flooding in the 1950s and 1960s.

Today, the key element of the flood control system is no longer adequate to protect the region from a “hundred-year flood”--the kind of flooding that caused billions of dollars in property damage along the Mississippi River. The Army Corps of Engineers has determined that the flood control channel south of the confluence of the Los Angeles River and the Rio Hondo will fail in a future downpour. The threat of flooding extends over a wide area, including Downey, Pico Rivera and Long Beach.

The Army Corps of Engineers has a solution for the flooding threat. It includes raising parapet walls higher along a 26-mile stretch of the L.A. River flood control channel. These are improvements that advocates of a “natural” Los Angeles River want to stop. The members of Unpave L.A. even advocate removing the flood protection now in place.

Even though Lakewood is miles from the river, the impacts on our community from a deficient flood control system are profound:

--As much as $8 million a year in federally mandated flood insurance premiums for homeowners and businesses.

--14,000 jobs lost in the construction trades and in abandoned business expansion by the year 2000.

The six cities most affected by an inadequate flood control system face a de facto building moratorium until the Army Corps of Engineers certifies that the system will survive a “hundred-year flood.” Until then, residents’ jobs are threatened, homes and businesses may deteriorate from lack of investment, and local economies could be further harmed by business stagnation.

What are the alternatives after 50 years of urban development under the promise of effective flood control? To do nothing to improve the flood control system is to condemn some communities to the permanent threat of disastrous flooding.

LARRY VAN NOSTRAN

Mayor, Lakewood