Building on floodplains forced taxpayers to subsidize private developers through dams

Evidence

Conservationists made similar arguments. “Wherever you have a floodplain that is undeveloped, do everything possible to keep it undeveloped,” the authors of one piece on river conservation argued. “This is the cheapest and by far the most beneficial means of flood control. It’s not simply that building on the floodplain is almost literally the same as building on the river, an open invitation to disaster; or that it destroys some of the finest land we have left for wildlife, recreation, and agriculture. It’s also that when we crowd houses and factories onto the plain we’re making inevitable the building of costly dams, thus forcing the general taxpayer to subsidize the developers.” — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 699

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Floodplain residential construction skyrocketed in postwar boom cities — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 682