Flood Insurance

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENAUER. Madam Speaker, as I prepare to leave office at the end of this Congress, one of my greatest disappointments has been an inability to make progress dealing with our flood insurance system and the dangerous pattern of development and infrastructure.

What is so frustrating to me is that the handwriting has been on the wall. Even though I have tried to sound the alarm, we really have precious little to show for it.

I was on national TV 2 weeks before Hurricane Katrina, sketching in very vivid terms what was going to happen to New Orleans when the big one hit. Sadly, that was true even though Katrina wasn't the big one, but it could have been much, much worse. The devastation was unimaginable, and our efforts at recovery were woefully inadequate, inefficient, and unfair. We keep having to learn the same lessons with new victims in new disasters.

This inspired my first major piece of legislation, which aimed to reform the flood insurance program. However, looking back, it was simply inadequate. We tried to provide incentives which simply weren't strong enough. There are all sorts of examples.

Houston has been a poster child for repetitive flood loss. I used an example of one home flooded 22 times over 35 years and received more than $1.8 million in flood insurance claims for a home worth a fraction of that amount.

While we labored mightily through the legislative process to make modest gains in the flood insurance program, it was too little and too late. Our incentives weren't strong enough to overcome a 200-year history of people making poor decisions on where and how they live and how we designed our infrastructure.

People continue to live in low-lying, flood-prone areas because we are attracted to water. Rich and middle-class people are attracted to it, and poor people are forced to live in vulnerable areas because the land is less expensive.

Both strategies are flawed. What is so frustrating is that we spend enough money to potentially do things much better. Madam Speaker, $1 in prevention saves $6 in costs of damages, but we continue to make the mistakes of the past by spending billions of dollars on flawed reactions to catastrophes like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy.

Additionally, it is not just massive storms. Day in and day out, we continue to put people in harm's way. We treat our rivers, waterways, and wetlands like machines that make the inevitable floods worse. We are happy to invest in decidedly suboptimal solutions. Traditional infrastructure that paves wetlands, channelized our rivers, and fortifies our coastlines make the inevitable flooding worse.

By giving people the illusion of protection, we encourage more people to move into harm's way. Over the past 20 years, we have failed in fundamental reforms. Making people respond to accurate flood mapping is too painful in the short term, so more people suffer pain in the long term.

The national flood insurance program is hopelessly inadequate and insolvent. The fundamental solutions have not changed over the last 25 years I have been working on this problem. We need to have accurate floodplain mapping, so people know exactly the situation they face and can act accordingly.

We can begin to make flood insurance actuarially sound. We shouldn't pretend that we can make incremental changes to a system that is fundamentally bankrupt. We should accept those losses and start over.

There must be stronger financial disincentives for people who refuse to do their jobs, and not just for individuals. State and local governments, with their land use planning, zoning, and building codes, should bear more of the financial burden in changing our policies to be sustainable financially, not the general taxpayer.

For people at risk, this is not unduly harsh. It is the reality in a world that is changing dramatically because of climate change. We do not do people any favors by ignoring the reality, subsidizing reckless behavior, and putting more people and property at risk. This does involve some short-term pain but will avoid long-term financial disaster and human catastrophe.

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