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Commentary: New floodplain development is plain wrong

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: October 8, 2008 - A damaging series of floods has afflicted St. Louis this year. This series started with the near-record Meramec River flood in March, continued with the Mississippi River flood of June-July, and hopefully ended with September's record flooding of local creeks that caused fatalities and damaged hundreds of fine homes, businesses and cars.

Incredibly, as if these events were imaginary, proposals are advancing for new commercial developments on St. Louis' floodplain. One will consume hundreds of acres of productive agricultural land in Maryland Heights, next to Creve Coeur County Park, and another huge one is under consideration in Hazelwood.

Floodplain development is a bad idea. It needlessly places more property at risk and assigns much of that risk to the taxpayer. The historical record proves that floods are becoming more frequent and more severe. What have been called "100-year" floods are closer to "10-year" floods; and consequently, our regulations and insurance rates are not in balance with reality.

The Maryland Heights project is particularly unwise. (Update 10/9: The proposal has just been withdrawn.) The land in question is already being used in a productive way. Maryland Heights has plenty of unoccupied commercial real estate, for example at Westport Plaza, safely situated on high ground.

Worse, this proposed development borders Creve Coeur County Park, one of the most highly visited, and greatly loved, recreational areas in our region. The proposed development would increase traffic, noise and air pollution while degrading the visual setting and environmental quality of the park. Go see for yourself: On any good day, you will find hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of hikers, bicyclists, roller bladers, soccer players, boaters and others enjoying the outdoors.

Besides, there is not enough prime agricultural land in the world, so destroying it is egregious. Nearly 40 percent of the Earth's land is arid, hyperarid, glaciated or permafrost, and much of the remainder is rocky, mountainous or otherwise unsuitable for farming. Reliable estimates are that only about 21 percent of Earth's land is arable. Presuming that this figure is correct, that's only 1 acre for each of the 6.7 billion people who currently live on Earth. Yet the population is rising, even as projects such as this proposed one reduce what arable land is available. Hunger is not in short supply, simply because good farmland and potable water supplies already are.

St. Louis County is encumbered with sprawl, yet has negative population growth and a sagging real estate market. If the tens of square miles of new developments constructed on floodplains since 1993 have been so good for our region, then why have county residents been impacted by two staggering property tax increases since 2004?

Is the responsibility of providing new roads, new sewer and water lines, and police and fire protection for new developments more encumbrance than benefit? This seems likely when such infrastructure is already available on relatively new, yet currently vacant, commercial properties in Maryland Heights, that have the additional advantages of being centrally located and of not being situated on the floodplain.

Robert Criss is a professor in the department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University. He is the coauthor of the 2003 book, "At the Confluence: Rivers, Floods, and Water Quality in the St. Louis Region."