September 2011 - Parks & Recreation - 18

Who, What, Where & hoW around the Parks

USGS.gov: Over a Century of National Water Data

here does the director of one of the most floodprone states in the country go for flood risk information? William J. bryan, head of Missouri's state
parks system, says the united states Geological survey website is the primary tool in his planning arsenal.
a major goal of the usGs is to reduce the vulnerability of the
people and areas in the country most at risk from natural hazards-
including floods. the site offers the following information:
■■ Real-time data on current conditions
■■ individual site information
■■ surface water data (flow and levels in streams, lakes, and
springs)
■■ Groundwater
■■ Water quality
management has also been about highly engineered constraints. Now, parks increasingly are becoming integral to new
ways of thinking about flooding.

The New Dutch Approach: Natural
Flood Control
Over the past five years, the Dutch have
begun to transform their water management system-and the Dutch experience
is influencing the way we think about

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Maps linking to all available water data
library of historic water data: http://waterdata.usgs.
gov/nwis
Real-time streamflow data: http://waterwatch.usgs.gov

public lands and water in this country. As
Renee Jones-Bos, the Dutch ambassador
to the United States wrote in May for the
Washington Post, " [T]his year's Mississippi
flooding is a reminder of 1993 and 1995,
when our rivers swelled to unprecedented levels. " But, Jones-Bos writes, the old
ways of taming water no longer seemed
tenable in an age of climate change, wetter winters, and increasing numbers
homes and businesses built close to the

dikes. Those factors, along with the threat
of failed dikes, " made us realize that
something else needed to change. "
Thus, the Dutch project named " Room
for the River " began in 2006. The philosophy behind it is simple: Restore the
natural f lood plains in places where
f looding will be least harmful to people-so as to protect densely populated
areas. And, in the process, allow marshy
landscapes near the river to return to

PeRSPeCtIVe

A Role for Parks
the case for a long-overdue approach to ﬂood control
By richard J. dolesh
News reports this spring and summer were full of stories about
major flooding of rivers in the U.S. heartland. Thousands of
people were displaced, and millions upon millions of dollars
were lost in damage to developed infrastructure. The accounts
of this year's river flooding follow a now familiar pattern, echoing episodes from previous years in which f looding overwhelmed levees, wreaking extraordinary damage upon lives
and property.
We allow and even encourage people to build homes and
businesses in flood-prone areas. We go further than that,
though: We incentivize it with absurdly low-cost flood insurance
and exorbitant public expenditures to protect private property
in high-flood-risk areas. After flooding occurs, we even allow
residences and businesses to rebuild on those same locations,
almost guaranteeing future damage.
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Parks & Recreation

SEPTEMBER 2011

www.NRPA .ORG

Flood control methods in America have been governed by
the philosophy that flooding is bad and that the best management practice is therefore to prevent floodwaters from rising and
quickly move them away from developed infrastructure. This
is why we have spent billions on channelizing and straightening rivers, turning them into concrete-lined trapezoidal drainage systems instead of managing them as free-flowing natural
means of flood prevention and control.
Yet in spite of the hundreds of billions spent on chopping,
channelizing, straightening, and narrowing rivers, along with
vast attendant levee systems, we still face great threats and
substantial destruction annually. The American Society of Civil
Engineers in its most recent quadrennial report card on America's infrastructure gave our nation's inland waterways and levees grades of D and D-. Nor are the long-term prospects of

September 2011 - Parks & Recreation

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