Federal or state?

Both Dutch and Japense people expect their government to take care of mostly everything when it comes to floods, from prevention to evacuation. How are these expectations in the land of the free?

The United States has seen a magnitude of flood-related disasters such as the Mississippi floods and hurricanes such as Katrina. [An informative American flood website is floodsafety.com, where amongst others you can find information on D'Hanis, Texas, which received a whopping 60 cm of rain in 2.45 hours.] However, most Americans tend to prefer to arrange things for themselves and have as little governmental influence as possible. Whereas Japan and the Netherlands have governments focussed mainly on preventing floods, the United States are centered around preparations of less than 1 week and recovering (see the reference below). Regardless of what is being done and when, it is still interesting to know who is being held responsible.

Like with the health care issue, the question is: 'who is responsible, federal or state government?'. If water management is handled per state, this could greatly affect implemented measures. In this regard there are similarities between the individual states in the USA and the countries that make up the European Union. Given the tiny country that the Netherlands is, in the 1970s it became unignorably evident that water issues (at that time contamination issues) were international problems, and therefore any solutions should be approached internationally as well. Now that we have the European Water Framework Directive, plans have moved from theory to actual implementation internationally as well. Looking at the United States, the Mississippi river and its floods seem to naturally call for a bigger-than-state approach. Is water management handled on a state or federal level, or both? Or are the inhabitants of flood prone areas left to fend for themselves? Undoubtely the answer will be a combination of these three.

More important though is the question whether the measures that are taken seem adequate to the inhabitants. Are people happy living their lives in flood prone areas? Do they feel safe? Does the amount of freedom weigh up nicely against the risk of flooding?

[Ironically, the safety chain approach in flood risk management used in the Netherlands (proaction-prevention-preparation-response-recovery) stems from the United States' Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).]