The man in charge of preparing the nation for the next natural disaster has a few
critical words for what's happening along the Missouri River in Saint Louis County.
James Lee Witt, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, noted the wave
of development in Chesterfield Valley, where business owners are banking that an
improved levee will protect them from future floods. "If it's manmade," Witt said,
"nature can wipe it out."

Witt was at Lambert Field last month en route to a visit today in Cape Girardeau. At
Cape, he will name that city as Missouri's first Project Impact community. The program
recognizes communities that take steps to protect themselves before a disaster hits.
Cape also is improving its levee, but that is to protect the town already there. In
Chesterfield, and neighboring Maryland Heights, levees are being improved to lure
development on what before had been farm fields.

The federal government has been doing just the opposite. Millions have been spent to
buy out floodplain buildings that are subject to repeated disasters. Witt noted that of
more than 10,000 properties purchased for nearly $100 million, nearly half of the them
were in Missouri.

Witt is pushing for changes that will make it harder for home and business owners to
file repeat damage claims under the federal flood insurance program. The problem,
Witt said, is that so called 500-year levees are not guarantees against catastrophe.
"You may get 10 years, you might get 20," he said. "I'm not saying Chesterfield
shouldn't build there, but they'd better know the risk." Witt said predicting future flood
levels is difficult because of development in a river's entire watershed. More roofs,
parking lots, streets, even farm fields means more water runs off with each rain.

Tom Uhlenbrock, Saint Louis Post-Dispatch in the Missouri Monitor, Volume 2, Number
3. March 1999