Flood Plains are for Floods
Image: Natural Water Retention Measures
Natural flood plains form where floods spread silt and mud in river valleys. Being flat, fertile, picturesque and usually supplied with surface and underground water, they attract farms, orchards and gardens. These are inevitably followed by roads, houses and businesses.
Despite the all the planners with their rules, the pressure of people plus a bit of corruption has always resulted in population clustering on fertile flood plains and deltas beside scenic rivers. There is no point trying to stop or reverse this tide of history but those who choose to build on flood plains must bear the costs of the occasional flood.
Community groups will always help those stricken by floods but taxpayers and insurers should not be forced to subsidise the insurance and damage costs for those who choose to live in risky places – their choice, their risk, their cost. Naturally insurance for flood-prone property will be expensive or not available – a clear message for those with ears to hear.
More cautious people build on the hills and leave the flood plains for floods, farms, trees, market gardens and grass.
Rational town planning would require sellers and developers to provide accurate flood maps to buyers, and councils should paint flood levels on power poles.
See: Flood plains are for floods: saltbushclub.com
There are few risk-free home sites. Those who build in thick bush or neglect cool-season burn-offs will inevitably suffer from bushfires; those who build on flood plains will be flooded; those who locate near fault zones will be shaken by earthquakes; those who build near the sea risk cyclones, giant waves and tsunamis; and those who farm the rich volcanic soil near “dormant” volcanoes risk burial under ash and lava.
The old railway engineers soon learned to build above most flood levels wherever possible.
So a useful rule is: don’t build essential infrastructure below the railway lines.
If you choose to locate on a flood plain, be prepared to pay higher insurance costs. And if you build your house there, build it on stilts: saltbushclub.com
Rather than wasting billions on futile efforts to change global climate, governments should spend those billions on flood-proofing their railways, bridges, roads and electricity supply.
And they should build more dams and weirs to conserve water and moderate floods.
Viv Forbes is a geologist who has studied landforms and lived on several farms near creeks and rivers that flood. He and his wife now live on a hill watching the floods draining from the plains and moving towards Ipswich and Brisbane, both river cities.
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Allan Shelton
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Viv…. Good work on your part.
I have been reading your articles for a long time. They are all excellent.
Thanks
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Viv,
I question if I make too many comments and I almost decided to let your ‘thoughtful’ article pass. But my previous comment just got double posted and I do not know why. It has happened before. So can anyone help me to avoid this?
Next, in Oregon what Viv suggests about flood plains is being done for the early settlers of the Willamette valley learned a lesson about its flood plains. What Viv did not mention is the wild fires which can naturally be started by lighting or by human causes.
Viv’s article and this comment is important because most people living in modern large acities. Where the majority of most states’ and nations’ live have little to no experience with floods or wild fires. Hence, there is a push by environmentalist to tear down dams which lessen the destruction of floods and provide irrigation wate for crops (food) during the dry summer.season.
And for decades the timber of the National Forest have not been managed properly to harvest the sustainable timber for one environmental reason or another. Hence, more destructive wildfires.
I have written essays and now only comments to inform PSI readers so they cannot say that nobody told me what Viv and I have just just written.
Have a good day, Jerry
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