High, Mostly Dry On Midwest Rivers Relocations Lessen Flood Damage

By Michael Grunwald Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, June 25, 2001; Page A01

TRENTON ISLAND, Wis. -- Legend has it that Jesse James slept here, John Dillinger played poker here, Pretty Boy Floyd hid out from the feds here. Trenton Island was once the center of sin on the Mississippi River, a boozy, bawdy playground for gunslingers, bootleggers and prostitutes. "Sodom and Gomorrah in their palest days of licentiousness would have to look to their laurels were they to be compared with that island," a newspaper thundered back then.

Trenton Island quieted down decades ago, but lately it has become eerily silent. That's because government officials purchased and demolished almost every building on the island after the devastating Mississippi River flood of 1993.

Now these 400 waterlogged acres that Wisconsin once tried to give away to Minnesota -- "because the evil forces [were] so strongly entrenched" -- have become an unlikely national model of foresight in public policy. Today, Trenton Island is a powerful symbol of a simple idea: Floods can't devastate flood-prone properties that no longer exist.

After the 1993 flood, federal officials adopted this ounce-of-prevention approach throughout the Midwest, collaborating with communities and states to buy out 13,000 flood-prone homes and businesses, or one-seventh of the damaged properties. That upfront investment helps explain why this year's flood, which carried as much water in some areas as the 1993 deluge, has caused only a tiny fraction of the damage.

Joe M. Allbaugh, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a longtime confidant of President Bush's, has been deeply impressed by the swift and tangible results of the Trenton Island buyout and other efforts to "mitigate" the cost of disasters before they strike.

In fact, in a recent interview, Allbaugh criticized the Bush administration's budget for slashing funds for several federal mitigation programs. He said he has brought his concerns about the cuts to the president and to Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., director of the Office of Management and Budget.

"Nobody ever asked my opinion about those budget issues," said Allbaugh, who was part of Bush's "iron triangle" of top advisers in Texas, along with senior White House officials Karl Rove and Karen P. Hughes. "I don't agree with that approach at all. You look at the damage in 1993 versus this time around: You've got to say that mitigation works."

The Mississippi flood of 2001, it turns out, had far more bark than bite. In 1993, FEMA spent $67 million in Wisconsin, $251 million in Iowa and $253 million in Illinois; in 2001, the preliminary damage estimates for the three states total about $30 million. The 1993 flood damage topped $10 billion; the 2001 bill should be less than 5 percent of that.

That is partly because this year's spring flood, triggered by rapid snowmelt, was limited mostly to the main-stem Mississippi and receded quickly; the 1993 summer flood, swelled by weeks of heavy rains, overwhelmed tributaries and lingered for weeks.

But flood plain managers and other disaster officials agree with Allbaugh that the disparity is also a result of the aggressive mitigation strategy begun in 1993, when Congress and FEMA agreed to focus a bit less on battling rivers and a lot more on moving families and buildings out of their path.

For one thing, they thought the new strategy would save lives. They also thought that, in the long run, it would be cheaper to buy out the most flood-prone homeowners once and for all than to compensate them again and again for their losses.

The surprise has been that even in the short run, as a series of floods has swept through the Midwest in recent years, a half-billion dollars' worth of pre-flood mitigation spending has paid huge dividends.

In Missouri, Charles County suffered $26 million in damage in 1993; after a big buyout, a similar flood two years later cost about $300,000. In river towns such as Austin, Minn.; Independence, Iowa; and Grafton, Ill., officials say their buyouts have already paid for themselves in averted damage.

All 325 homes in Valmeyer, Ill., were moved to higher ground after 1993; the old town site keeps flooding, but no one cares anymore. And in Davenport, Iowa, which Allbaugh recently criticized for refusing to build a floodwall, two residents have sought permits for major repairs this year; after the 1993 flood, more than 50 applied.

FEMA believes that, in eight years, federal taxpayers have received a 200 percent return on their investment in mitigation -- and that doesn't include the local or environmental benefits from new parkland and open space.

"We're saving taxpayers huge money," said Illinois emergency management director Michael Shamness, whose state has removed 3,000 homes since 1993. "The numbers mean something. They mean we're not paying off the same people over and over."

That is almost entirely true on Trenton Island, the former mecca of riverside debauchery near Red Wing, Minn. After the Mississippi tore through in 1993, local officials worked with FEMA on a $6.3 million buyout. They dangled an incentive -- all residents were offered the pre-flood value of their homes plus relocation costs -- as well as a threat, to pursue zoning violation penalties against some property owners who decide to stay.

In the end, the government bought and demolished 64 homes and businesses; five more were sold to a conservation group. Trenton Island's population plunged from about 175 to a dozen or so.

There is no doubt that something vital has been lost here. Once, outraged editorialists complained that "heaven has not set fire to destroy [Trenton Island] nor has the public conscience of Red Wing risen in its might and smitten it." Now the island is mostly maple and oak trees.

And debauchery aside, many upstanding island residents felt unfairly pressured into taking the buyouts. Even a county report hailing the initiative, titled "Out of Harm's Way," acknowledged that "recent personal interviews with relocated homeowners revealed lingering animosity and bitterness towards the entire buyout program."

"This place is a ghost town now," said Brad Smith, 42, owner of the Harbor Bar at the island's edge. "That buyout ripped the heart out of this community."

Smith's bar was once known as Pumplin's Saloon, a notorious "house of wild women" before it was raided by constables in the days of Dillinger. It's steeped in the spirit of the river, with a mural of the Delta Queen and cedar statues of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. In the summertime, Smith cooks jerk chicken on his deck, and hundreds of boaters stop by for meals.

In many ways, though, the Harbor Bar is a prime example of why officials have pushed so hard for buyouts; it was the only seriously damaged property on Trenton Island this year. Smith pays $5,000 a year for his bar's flood insurance; he hopes to collect $400,000 for this year's flood, which essentially destroyed his first floor with five feet of water.

It will be his third six-figure payout in eight years. That does not include the $215,000 buyout he accepted for his home -- even while he refused to sell his business.

"It's a rip-off!" fumed Bud Cedarblade, who has lived next door to the Harbor Bar for 60 years. Cedarblade doesn't like the way the buyout has eradicated his community, but he really doesn't like the way taxpayers keep footing repair bills for flood-prone properties.

He's not moving, but he has raised his home high enough that he won't need handouts from anyone: "I'm old school. If I'm going to live by the river, I'm not going to ask you to pay to fix my house."

Allbaugh oversaw emergency management for Bush while serving as his chief of staff in Texas, which with Louisiana shares the dubious distinction of having the most multiple bailouts for flood-prone properties. Even before Tropical Storm Allison ripped through Houston this month, one house generated federal payments for 16 floods in 18 years, for a total of $806,000, or about five times the appraised value of the home.

Scott Faber of the advocacy group Environmental Defense warned that Texas "resembles Bangladesh when it comes to flood-plain management," and he wondered whether Bush and Allbaugh would bring a "Wild West mentality" to flood policy.

But Allbaugh said he is equally tired of bailing out flood-prone properties: "How many times is the American taxpayer going to ante up?"

He called himself a staunch believer in mitigation, and called for a nationwide expansion of Project Impact, a pilot mitigation project designed to promote buyouts. He said he firmly supports programs to restore wetlands, which help reduce floods by absorbing water, as well as programs to mitigate damage from earthquakes, hurricanes and other disasters.

The Bush budget, however, includes no funding for Project Impact or the nation's main wetlands program, and would require communities to pay a larger share of federal mitigation programs. The Sierra Club has called it a "Flood Our Families" budget, and Allbaugh said he has told the president that it does not reflect their true beliefs.

"I don't believe it's in our best interest to promote less mitigation," said Allbaugh, who credited his Clinton administration predecessor, James Lee Witt, with reinventing FEMA. "It's like the old Fram [oil filter] commercial: You can pay me now, or pay me later. We're seeing all across the country that it makes a lot of sense to pay now. The president believes that, too."

Some members of Congress remain skeptical of mitigation programs -- in part because they are so avidly promoted by environmentalists, in part because they are seen as an alternative to the popular levees and other flood-control projects built by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) recently warned that green groups want to spend "billions, perhaps trillions," to buy out the nation's flood plains, rather than investing in levees and other barriers that could protect the 10 million buildings there.

"I suspect that their plan would be a bit more comprehensive and imaginative if it were their homes, businesses or farmland at stake," Lott wrote in a Mississippi newspaper.

One recent morning at the Harbor Bar, Smith was making a similar case to his congressman, Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), who recently filed a bill to boost funding for mitigation programs.

The river, Smith said, is always going to flood. But the true river rats, he said, are never going to leave. "You're going to have to drag out my dead body to get me to leave," he said.

Then he paused. And he grinned.

"Unless you can pay me enough money to make it worth my while."

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

-- Anonymous, June 24, 2001