There are, of course, many sources for flood damage estimates. NOAA puts the annual “paid” flood damage at around $6 billion annually. Other estimates place the paid damages at around 20% of the actual damages. Still other numbers say that 60% of all damage from severe weather is flood related and that 75% of flood damage is caused by flood water that is less than 3′ deep.

Add all that up and it becomes pretty clear that money spent to prevent flood damage has a tremendous opportunity to deliver significant returns. However, the long term major engineering projects usually touted as great accomplishments by most politicos, take decades to complete. In the meantime there goes another $5 or $10 billion in losses from the next dozen or so flood events.

Every flood threatened community in the US must begin to realize that the need for robust, effective emergency flood protection is real. They must also eliminate sandbags and earthen barriers from the equation. These archaic efforts are unreliable and ineffective, require tremendous amounts of time, manpower and resources. There are new technologies now available (you can view one of the systems at http://www.floodwalls.com) that are less costly, more effective, proven that can be deployed in one 10th the time and at lower cost. These new systems have no negative environmental impact, no long term negative health concerns and can be deployed and redeployed multiple times with no loss of effectiveness. Spend $10 million save $10 billion, seems like an argument with merit.

There are, of course, many sources for flood damage estimates. NOAA puts the annual “paid” flood damage at around $6 billion annually. Other estimates place the paid damages at around 20% of the actual damages. Still other numbers say that 60% of all damage from severe weather is flood related and that 75% of flood damage is caused by flood water that is less than 3' deep.

Add all that up and it becomes pretty clear that money spent to prevent flood damage has a tremendous opportunity to deliver significant returns. However, the long term major engineering projects usually touted as great accomplishments by most politicos, take decades to complete. In the meantime there goes another $5 or $10 billion in losses from the next dozen or so flood events.

Every flood threatened community in the US must begin to realize that the need for robust, effective emergency flood protection is real. They must also eliminate sandbags and earthen barriers from the equation. These archaic efforts are unreliable and ineffective, require tremendous amounts of time, manpower and resources. There are new technologies now available (you can view one of the systems at http://www.floodwalls.com) that are less costly, more effective, proven that can be deployed in one 10th the time and at lower cost. These new systems have no negative environmental impact, no long term negative health concerns and can be deployed and redeployed multiple times with no loss of effectiveness. Spend $10 million save $10 billion, seems like an argument with merit.