Clinton Tours Flood Area as New Controls Are Proposed : Disaster: President vows quick aid. Policy shift would emphasize keeping people out of the way of high water.

President Clinton pledged relief funds to flood-ravaged areas of southern Georgia Wednesday as his Administration also proposed new flood-control measures aimed at accommodating rather than dominating nature.

The new federal policies, if approved by Congress and carried out by the states, would accomplish a sharp break with two centuries of federal flood-control efforts. Instead of relying primarily on dikes, dams and levees to keep rivers in their places, the government would emphasize keeping people out of the way of floodwaters.

The policies would do so by restoring wetlands, encouraging homes and businesses to move out of flood plains and requiring those who do build in flood-prone areas to buy expensive insurance and reduce future relief costs.

Clinton, on a one-day visit to tour waterlogged areas of Georgia, promised quick federal assistance for flood victims in Georgia, Alabama and Florida, a minimum of $60 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Agriculture and Labor.

The President said more money would be released once the floodwaters recede and a full accounting of the damage can be made.

“The most important thing is to help people put their lives back together,” he said after his tour. “This is a very serious disaster.”

The proposed policies could have an impact on flood-control planning and river-side development across the nation, including parts of Southern California. Some of the programs, including one that encourages farmers to return filled-in wetlands to their natural state, are already in place, although their funding has been in question.

Other proposals would require congressional action, including one to reactivate a “water resources council” to coordinate federal and state policies and those of Native American tribes. If more people in flood zones are to be encouraged to buy flood insurance, as recommended, state and federal governments will have to work cooperatively with private insurance firms.

The proposals are part of the report of an interagency task force that Clinton created after last summer’s devastating floods in the Midwest. Those floods caused more than $12 billion in damage and 38 deaths.

This summer, heavy rains following Tropical Storm Alberto have covered parts of Georgia, Alabama and Florida and have destroyed millions of dollars worth of property, forced tens of thousands of people from their homes and killed more than two dozen people.

Although the Southern flooding is only about one-tenth the size of the massive Midwestern deluge, the devastation has been amplified by the widespread poverty in many of the rural areas now under water--counties that have some of the lowest per capita incomes in the United States.

Clinton has made a major effort to improve the federal government’s response to natural disasters, repeatedly visiting disaster sites and pressing for rapid action on disaster relief.

“If the American people can’t depend on their government to handle emergencies right, then it’s hard to imagine how they could trust us to do anything right,” Clinton said as he opened a meeting on flood relief with Georgia Gov. Zell Miller, Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles, Alabama Gov. Jim Folsom and other area officials.

Clinton, dressed in a short-sleeved plaid shirt and chino slacks, toured the flooded area by motorcade and helicopter, abandoning his usual black limousine for a bulletproof gray Chevy Suburban van. He viewed the swollen Flint River, which has covered schools, houses and thousands of acres of crops.

“We know that this will not be done overnight,” Clinton said as he presented the money to the governors. “We will stay till the job is done.”

In fact, the lingering effects of such floods were underscored by the committee that reported Wednesday to Clinton on the Midwest flood. Some 100,000 homes were damaged by that deluge and the financial impact on businesses and the loss to the federal government’s tax revenues cannot yet be calculated, the committee said.

Floods of such magnitude, the committee warned, will happen again. Federal and state governments, it added, must act not just to respond to such disasters but to reduce the human and economic tolls of future floods.

In one of its potentially most controversial proposals, the committee urged the federal government to limit the amount of disaster assistance that flood victims would get if they do not purchase flood insurance. If put in place, such a measure would hamstring presidents as they descend upon disaster areas such as Georgia, where poor communities in flood-prone areas go largely without flood insurance.

The committee also called for the Army Corps of Engineers--the federal agency most responsible for structural flood-control measures such as dams and levees--to rewrite its guidelines so that environmental considerations are balanced against economic ones.

During the Corps’ planning for the rehabilitation of burst levees along the Mississippi River, the Army engineers “should consider land acquisition as an alternative” to rebuilding structures designed to hold rivers back, the committee urged.

Such proposals won praise from American Rivers, an environmental group that has pressed for restoration of wetlands and for lesser reliance on levees and dams. Partly because of Clinton Administration actions, more than 5,000 flooded homes and businesses throughout the Midwest have been moved from harm’s way since last summer’s flood. Under an emergency program designed to increase the region’s natural ability to absorb downpours, more than 100,000 acres of flood-plain farmland will be voluntarily converted into wetlands.

But one analyst said Wednesday that Clinton’s actions in Georgia appear to contradict the message sent by his Administration’s latest report and by the Administration’s actions in the wake of the Midwest floods.

“By giving out disaster relief with no strings attached in Georgia, Clinton is rewarding people for poor land-use decisions,” said Scott Faber, director of flood-plain programs for American Rivers.

“You’re talking about people who’ve just lost everything--and it’s hard for a politician not to want to open the government’s coffers to them. But it’s a question of how you provide that help, how do you tailor it. We have to make sure we make disaster-relief policy that reduces our relief costs later.”