Preventing future floods
THE RAINS soaking Eastern Massachusetts, southern Maine, and southern New Hampshire are of a magnitude not experienced in New England since the 1930s. Nothing can be done to prevent widespread damage, but the massive flooding ought to prompt state and local officials to establish priority lists so that communities most liable to devastation will get help to mitigate future losses.
Eastern New England is a maze of rivers and tributaries, many of them built up with the mills and other factories that are relics of early industrialization. The same river locations that provide views and make these buildings desirable for conversion to shops and housing make them prime targets of the floodwaters.
In Peabody, Mayor Michael Bonfanti yesterday was looking out of City Hall at 4 feet of water. Peabody was once a center of the tannery business, and Bonfanti said yesterday in a telephone interview, ''if we are going to bring those tanneries back" and reuse them for other purposes, ''we need to fix it [the flooding]."
Peabody has been trying for years to get state aid for this purpose. Governor Romney vetoed a $5.7 million appropriation in 2004 on the grounds that he didn't have enough information about the project. The city tried again last year, getting a $2 million item in the Senate economic stimulus bill, but that is still held up by a dispute with the House.
The federal government also has been slow to help. After several rejections, two requests totaling $10 million are pending. All this money might not have been enough to prevent the record floods of the last few days, but much could have been done to forestall damage from lesser storms.
Flood prevention is not the highest priority of state government. It took the evacuation of downtown Taunton in October to focus attention on the problem of under-maintained dams, which are also vestiges of industrialization. Spurred by the near disaster and empowered by a law passed three years earlier, the Department of Conservation and Recreation devised a system to rate the soundness of the dams, fix the ones under state control, and track the owners of the others to get them repaired.
The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency coordinates disaster responses in the state. It is quite properly preoccupied this week with the immediate priorities of flood relief. The agency and the Department of Conservation and Recreation are devising a list of priorities for flood prevention, but the process is slow, receives little publicity, and depends on the vagaries of federal aid. Romney, out of office next January, needs to leave behind a flood prevention priority list and expedite the process of marshaling local, state, and federal funds. Massachusetts should be better prepared for the torrents of the future. 