“The flood,” WJ McGee observed in 1891, after a one-man survey of flood plains in the Mississippi Basin and across the nation, “remains a hardly-appreciated obstacle to progress. Indeed, as population has increased, men have not only failed to devise means of suppressing or escaping this evil, but have, with singular short-sightedness, rushed into its chosen path.”
A natural scientist of unlimited range, his given name was William John; but he always signed himself WJ, without the periods; he simply wanted it that way. McGee, as Gifford Pinchot testifies in his memoirs, operated as a sort of one-man Brain Trust in setting up the Inland Waterways Commission in 1907. “It would be interesting,” McGee reflected in his paper on Flood Plains, sixty-eight years ago, “to determine the relative density of population upon the riparian lowlands, not only within the Mississippi Valley but throughout the United States.” But like many a research man before and since, “the data are inadequate,” he concluded.
By devices such as aerial photography and more precise techniques in the enumeration of “structural units” on the ground, a group of six men headed by Gilbert F. White at the University of Chicago find present-day data not so much inadequate as ill-related and confused. The complete findings are presented in a book, Changes in Urban Occupance of Flood Plains of the United States, published in December by the University of Chicago’s Department of Geography.
The gist of the findings is that, despite the $4 billion spent to reduce danger from floods in the twenty-one years since 1936, “mean annual flood losses increased over the period of record and at a rate that has not declined notably since 1936. The forces influencing urban enterprises are incapable of prolonged pessimism, even where catastrophic loss has been experienced.”
Unwittingly, or “against its inclinations, the Army Corps of Engineers is … one of the major real estate developers in the country.” Even before announced new engineering works are begun, unduly optimistic developers charge into the flood plains and begin raising new structures.
Among McGee’s suggestions for the alleviation of flood damage as “a barely mitigated evil” in like locations three quarters of a century ago was an admonition to railway builders to lay their tracks so far as possible above the high-water marks of rivers, and build bridges and trestles high. White and his associates now point out that run-down sections of towns bordering rivers are frequent targets for federally sponsored urban renewal programs. Expressways in the national network of superhighways seek floodplains as rights of way because the lands are level. But highway systems of such design are likely to attract still further occupancy of potential flood plains, interurban and urban, because of “the increased accessibility they will provide.” Housing, trade, and industry are likely to follow them on to the flood plains. So long as new developments do not increase hazards to others and occupants realize the risk, they may be warranted.
McGee reflected in 1891, “The squirrel hides his hoard of nuts a rod from the brink of the advancing railway cut. The field bunting busies herself in building a nest in the stubble, regardless of the approaching turns of the plow. Verily, the short-sighted dumb creatures may find exalted precedents!”
A version of this article appeared in print in the September 1959 issue of Resources magazine.
