The former policy required individuals buying a home to make perhaps the largest investment in their lifetimes without adequate knowledge of the greatest risk to their property and even their safety. If flooding occurred, few had insurance, and their losses depended on public policy and charity. Homes along waterways have been carried off in the grips of rampaging waters for centuries. Now it appears that not destructive forces of nature, but constructive legislation and wise planning will cause the dwellings in the flood plains to disappear gradually.
Flood control is a problem that planners have been wrestling with for years.
Across the nation the continued amassing of people in impacted urban areas, with consequent transformation of land from rural to urban uses, will create flood problems in downstream drainage areas beyond our present comprehension. Now is the time to begin exploring less costly methods of minimizing flooding so that the challenges of the future can be met at the least possible cost to taxpayers. SARA hopes to prohibit, by ordinance, construction within the delineated flood plain. On a broader scale, use of flood plain management could not only provide flood protection at the cheapest possible cost, but could also provide the opportunity for open-space development in urban areas.