Flood Protection vs Avoidance: Issues Concerning Gravel Bed Rivers

It is known that intensive structural flood prevention measures often lead to further development in flood hazard areas, generating a need for yet more flood protection measures. This reciprocal pattern of development followed by river engineering has been exhaustively criticized by national policy experts, but persists as a model of growth in much of the U.S. Predictable increases in flood hazard and compromise of ecological floodplain integrity result, and, once embraced, a community loses the flexibility to manage floodplains for values other than real estate. The more dynamic fluvial behavior of gravel bed rivers in the western states makes flood prevention strategies more challenging, yet the relative lack of development on these floodplains may lend more opportunity to redefine floodplain management approaches. In this paper, the failures of national floodplain management programs are viewed through the lenses of two small river valley communities, Jackson Hole. Wyoming, on the Snake River and Livingston, Montana on the Yellowstone River. The authors suggest that traditional structural flood control approaches are inadequate for these communities, and that if natural resource values are important, local, rather than federal, regulation of flood prone areas will be necessary.