Congress, meanwhile, has long treated levee-repair spending as a budgetary sacred cow. Environmentalists say the Army Corps of Engineers, which constructs and repairs levees as the federal government's primary flood control agency, has a vested interest in keeping a bad system going, and so encourages and even generates projects that keep people in harm's way. Raleigh Leef, the corps' deputy chief of policy and civil works, denies this, saying the agency merely takes its marching orders from Congress. The Clinton administration's Council on Environmental Quality opposed the rebuilding of many levees following the 1993 floods. Bond is a levee loyalist.
Developers get an awfully nice sweetheart deal.
Mount points out that areas such as Arboga, a town in nearby Yuba County, are being newly zoned for subdivisions on the very same land inundated by floods in early 1997. T he government does offer to buy out residents of a flooded or severely flood-prone region for the market value of their home or place of business. Many of those living in the fertile lowlands, however, are farmers who would also be giving up their livelihoods. If flood damage to a house equals 50 percent or less of its assessed value, the policyholder gets a check for repairs. But the NFIP is broke.