Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 5, 1995 TAG: 9511030063
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
After all, city voters years ago approved a bond issue to pay for the local share of a $36-million flood-reduction project on the Roanoke River; the city years ago adopted a channelization plan; a cost-sharing agreement was signed years ago with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - and not a spade of channelization dirt has been turned.
Meanwhile, there's no guarantee that 90 more years will elapse before another 100-year flood comes along. Another way of looking at it is that such a flood has one chance in 10 of happening in any given decade, and one in 100 of happening in any given year. And land alongside the river and its tributaries continues to be subject to lesser flooding.
In fact, however, much has been done in the past decade. And much of what hasn't been done, we may be better off for it.
Enough has been done, and learned, at any rate to suggest the time has come for a thorough re-examination of the channelization project. Its benefits-to-costs edge, never huge, may have diminished to the vanishing point, while the value of a different sort of project has become more compelling.
Consider:
The identification of toxic waste in some of the land that would be disturbed by the flood-reduction project, and the emergence of questions about responsibility for clean-up, have not only stalled the project. They've driven up the potential costs.
Movement by businesses, factories and others out of the flood plain has continued quietly but steadily, thereby reducing the economic benefits of channelization.
Floodproofing of the Roanoke Valley's sewage-treatment plant and of Memorial Hospital - two important flood-plain facilities that would be difficult if not impossible to move - has been completed, also reducing the prospective benefits of channelization.
Since the flood of '85, a high-tech warning system has been installed for the Roanoke Valley. In reducing danger to lives and property, it also reduces the prospective benefits of channelization.
Experience with greenways elsewhere in the country is showing how they act as "sponges" to absorb moisture and reduce flooding more cheaply, and with fewer harmful environmental effects, than do traditional channelization projects.
Turning flood plains into greenways also enhances quality of life and raises the value of adjacent land, another factor not considered in the original cost-benefit calculations of the Roanoke River project (though it does include green enhancements).
The Fifth Planning District has developed a regional plan of zoning overlays to reduce runoff caused by upstream development. By addressing a root cause of increased flooding, rather than subsidizing those who suffer from the results, this could provide flood reduction more fairly as well as less expensively.
A rigorous review, taking into account changes over the past decade and the need for more regional cooperation, might still support the wisdom of Roanoke River channelization. But there's a good chance it wouldn't.
Channelization in any case shouldn't be an end in itself. If the real goal - reducing danger to lives and property - can be better served in other ways, such as with greenways, then Roanoke should stand ready to abandon the channelization plan.
by CNB