Storm water, levees and flooding
As we recently saw the Meramec river flooded a number of places along its banks. Spared this year was Valley Park — their costly new levee keep the flood water at bay. But at what price? I don’t man the cash spent for construction but the impact to those up river.
One such casualty is the town of Pacific. Some will say that Pacific floods anyway. True enough. However when you have a certain volume of water coming down the river it must go somewhere — if a levee keeps it from naturally spreading out then the crest gets higher until the water backs up and finds a spot where it can spread — the next point up river without a levee or one that is lower.
So while levees are part of the problem so is sprawl. Runoff from all the streets, parking lots and such make matters worse. We are responsible for the factors that caused our recent flooding issues — by messing with the natural flow of water and with adding acres upon acres of impervious surfaces. I say we begin to undo the mess we’ve created — remove a bulk of the impervious surfaces like parking lots and then remove the levees.
…and adopt form-based zoning codes that include sustainable sites imperatives, and sunset the sprawl-inducing single-use zoning immediately.
Or at least revise the existing codes to say that the first 1″ of rainfalll must be handled on-site.
…and then demanding form-based codes and the burning of all single-use zoning books on currently on the shelves. They can then extinguish the flames with the first 1″ of undiverted rainwater.
Hey guys, the real problem is building (and rebuilding) in/on the floodplain. In the long run, you’re not going to control mother nature (see Katrina + New Orleans). We’d be a whole lot better off just buying these people out and getting them out of harm’s way instead of building flood walls and paying these same people to rebuild, repeatedly, in areas that are prone to flooding! The issue here wasn’t “the first inch”. The issue was multiple inches + saturated ground = not-unexpected increases in runoff.