To: ralfph who wrote (5149 ) 10/27/2003 3:48:33 PM From: marcos Read Replies (1) | Respond to There have been studies done on the psychology of people building on floodplains, a notable one done along the Mississippi river and its tributaries, where flooding is quite predictable .... there are dikes [they call them 'levees'] in many places now, and they still get broached by the waters on those every-ten-or-so years repetitions of the 'fifty-year' and 'two-hundred-year' patterns .... anyway, the dikes are relatively new, and before that people would rebuild houses and barns right where they knew that every ten years going back the land had flooded ... they rarely did this in the first couple of years following the last flood, rather tending more to do it in the eighth and ninth years ..... i haven't read this study directly, it was just quoted to me when i was proposing that much of BC timberland should be privately owned and managed .... the other party's argument was that individuals don't think very far ahead, certainly not long enough for even one full rotation of timber ..... which is true in most cases probably, which is why to privatise timberland we'd need well-planned and well-enforced regulations [if king Olaf could do it in the 1850s, why can't we] ... but i didn't question the quoting of this study, because i know a place where it floods regularly, and people would be still rebuilding there if they could get a permit, and the land hadn't been bought for park .... this is a place that floods every november, it's just a matter of how much, and people there would point out with amusement the watermarks on their walls, one guy's answer was to pour six inches of concrete on his rotten wooden floor, partly to smooth it out, mostly so the house would be less likely to float away, lol ..... me, i like a defensible position, clear downhill field of fire all the way round, with no close cover for insurgents
