Just as in all natural disasters, there are policies regarding how funds are applied to recovery. The intent was to provide funding to repair levees damaged by a flood event in order to be prepared for the next event. No one can predict floods - its evaluating the risk and how we respond. Please understand, the flood of 97 exceeded the design capacity of some of the levees. A similar flood in the future will probably result in similar damage.
Flood control is to manage the flood risk.
Repairing a levee does not mean we control the flood. A nonstructural alternative can be another method of reducing flood impacts. We may repair the levee now and keep our eyes open for nonstructural alternatives in the long term analysis. We need your input for the future. The river can only discharge so much.