Robert Freitag is Executive Director of the Cascadia Region Earthquake Workgroup and Director of the Institute for Hazards Mitigation Planning & Research at the University of Washington. He has recently developed a higher education course in floodplain management for FEMA, based on the principles articulated in his book Floodplain Management, published by Island Press in 2009.
A flooding river is very hard to stop. Many residents of the United States have discovered this the hard way. Right now, over five million Americans hold flood insurance policies from the National Flood Insurance Program, which estimates that flooding causes at least six billion dollars in damages every year. Like rivers after a rainstorm, the financial costs are rising along with the toll on residents. And the worst is probably yet to come.