Do you live on a flood plain? Why?

I live on a plain in a high desert. Why do any of us live here?

We all have to live somewhere, and every area has its problems. Some of us live on fault lines, some of us live on flood plains, some of us live in deserts, some of us live in Tornado Alley, and some of us live in blizzard country. It’s just a matter of picking your poison.

As for why people expect their governments to do something about it, that’s one of the things government does. It protects its citizens from things like natural disasters. And since we are not presently allowed to improve public land on our own, it’s not like anyone else can do it.

I live on the side of a hill in a community with shale and clay soil, where having one basement flood is common. Lots of pools of standing water here.

I live in the high foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, no floods here, our lakes and rivers just fill up and sometimes small streams overflow. Our biggest fear is forest fires and crazy winter storms. Why does anyone live anywhere? Every place has it’s risks and hazards.

Uh…what?

I live on a hill about 75 feet above sea level but within 2 blocks of where the Charles River enters Boston Harbor. No amount of rain ever floods us. The building is 100 years old, and there’s no sign of water ever getting in the basement. But if there were a large tsunami I’d be toast.

We live about 5 minutes away from a river. Five years ago the river flooded and we were fine.

Technically I live on a flood plain, about 3 blocks from the river. Since this is California the river is dry most of the year, and only has a trickle most of the rest of the year. This area used to be all farmland, and still has quite a bit. I think I just realized why so many people live on flood plains, it is left over from when most people lived on farms.

After several years of little rain the riverbed was full of willow trees and we had a big to do about whether cutting them down was destroying a protected wetland. The fear was that leaving them would create blockages when it rained that would create flooding. They ended up compromising, and cleared the middle of the river bed, leaving the willows along the sides. We had a fair amount of rain but no floods.

I don’t have flood insurance – maybe I need to get some.

No, I don’t

I have a real issue with planning commissions that allow people to build and live in a flood plain. When they need help, the taxpayers are left holding the bag.

@YARNLADY About 21% of the US is in a Flood Plain. Here’s the US Navy Map of what the US will look like with a few more decades with Global Warming. Of course, we can insist reality doesn’t exist and natural disasters are all the fault of those living where they happen. That works just fine as long as they happen to them and not you.

@ETpro Thanks for the map. From that and other similar projections, I own future beach front property.

Look at any map and think transportation and communication. Rivers were the primary means of travel before the land was developed so most communities formed around them.

@bewailknot You must be in southern Ca. Northern Ca. has no dry rivers. lol

@ETpro, that’s an interesting map, where did it come from? As for insisting on reality, out of all the natural disasters, living on a flood plain is one that we can control. We know it rains, we know that water must go somewhere, we no longer use rivers as major points of transportation though they are important cargo transport routes, we are also in a slump where local governments can’t raise sufficient revenues to cover all the services that citizens are demanding, so why blame the government for your decisions. My question was spurred by a report on a local flooding problem caused by some major storms, and I just was fed up with people complaining about the obvious.

@Coloma Yes, well the northern part of southern California. We might have more water in the rivers if we didn’t dam them and turn them into reservoirs aka man made lakes.

@DaphneT Here’s a good site to assess your risk given current meteorological conditions.

The image purports to be from the US Navy, and is consistent with other data about 21% of the US land area being in a flood plain. Of course, this assumes traditional style floods plus a bit of global warming. If we see the anticipated massive methane releases sue to excess CO2 building up in the atmosphere, we could expect sea level rises of 350 feet. That kind of runaway warming would lead to a massive reshaping of the world map, mass extinctions of flora and fauna, and food and potable water wars due to mass migrations of displaced people. Surely we don’t want government getting involved in issues like this. Exxon Mobil will handle it for us.

My problem with this question is my friends who live in the middle of the country where they rarely get a hurricane or over flowing body of water, do get very destructive tornadoes and flash flooding. I don’t know if it costs the government as much as other disasters those two things, but it certainly costs lives. I bet way more people who live in flood plains actually pay into the FEMA system through flood insurance than people who believe they will never flood. It’s something like over 30% of people who get flooded are not in a high risk flood area, a lot of them don’t have flood insurance, because they feel safe, or it was not required for their mortgage.