Wednesday, April 25, 2001; Page A30

FEDERAL EMERGENCY Management Agency Director Joe Allbaugh suggested this week that the Bush administration might favor a limit on emergency aid to people and communities that rely too readily on federal generosity to protect them against recurring floods and other natural disasters. "The question is how many times the American taxpayer has to step in and take care of this flooding, which could be easily prevented by building levees and dikes," he said of communities that, confident of federal aid, have taken too few steps to protect themselves.

One example appears to be Davenport, Iowa, a city that has resisted construction of a flood wall lest it disturb a riverfront that is a major tourist attraction. "I think there's a point of no return," the FEMA director and friend of the president said at a briefing. "I don't know whether it's two strikes you're out or three . . . but obviously these homes and properties that are continually flooded, it is not fair to the American taxpayer to ask them time in and . . . out to pay for rebuilding."

He's right about that -- and lots of luck. There is even a provision in the president's budget -- sensible, in our view -- that "repetitive loss" and certain other properties be required to pay "risk-based" rather than the normal subsidized premiums for federal flood insurance. But the words had hardly been uttered by Mr. Allbaugh before White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was distancing the president from the implication that the government might not pay. "There was no discussion of that in the meeting with the president," Mr. Fleischer said. "The discussion was about how to protect communities. . . . The message is . . . that the . . . government stands by and stands ready to help if necessary." There are, after all, by our calculation, 102 electoral votes in states abutting the flooding Mississippi, and that's not counting major tributaries.

The Bush administration is hardly the first to have suggested over the years that, by making various forms of disaster aid too readily available, the government has only encouraged people to live in, develop and farm areas where natural disasters are almost sure to occur. The issue arises with regard to beachfront property as well as low-lying areas along rivers, and with regard not just to property damage but to damaged crops. The subsidized development -- subsidized in the sense that the government covers much of the risk -- often has an environmental as well as a fiscal cost.

But the politics of such disasters push in favor of providing the aid, and forget the discipline. Congress likes to come to the rescue, the more so because the aid is often in the form of a supplemental appropriations bill that no president wants to veto, and to which all manner of other goodies can then be attached. Mr. Allbaugh has come quickly to the heart of a Washington institution that ought to be changed for precisely the reasons that change is unlikely.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2001

Answers

I'm from Iowa, and I know all about Davenport and it's 'tude' about not building a levee. The national government should have stood up to those people a long time ago. And apparently the Bush Admin. is going to be chickenshit once again.

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2001

And we have Princeville in NC--very similar situation.

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2001