“A Twenty-First-Century Catastrophe” - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 175

water runof from two to six times over what occurs on unpaved ground. Ill-conceived
or poorly built flood-control infrastructure worsens the impact of overflowing rivers.
Floodwalls designed to restrain water in one section of a river can push dangerously
high water downstream. Poorly built levees, such as those that ringed New Orleans dur-
ing Hurricane Katrina, can breach and allow the gushing floodwaters to sweep away
people and their homes, destroy roads and bridges, and submerge cities.
After high waters recede, flooded communities suffer from contaminated drinking
supplies, waterborne disease, ruined crops, washed-out roads, and long-term economic
hardship.
In the United States, seven of the nation's ten costliest disasters have been caused by
floods. Although death by flooding has declined since the 1950s, thanks to improved
weather forecasting and early-warning systems, the USGS estimates that flooding kills
140 Americans a year, on average, and causes $6 billion worth of property damage.
In Britain, where floods have been labeled “ a twenty-irst-century catastrophe , ” un-
usually hard, prolonged rainstorms between 2000 and 2007 caused over 2 billion
pounds' worth of damage and left more than a third of a million people without drink-
ing water, and thousands homeless. A single violent stormburst, in July 2007, produced
more than a month's worth of rain in one hour; towns were swamped, public transport-
ation was paralyzed, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown declared an emergency. The
2007 flood, according to the nation's Environment Agency, eclipsed the UK's previous
benchmark, the floods of 1947, which inundated seven hundred thousand acres and
were the worst in two hundred years. “We have not seen flooding of this magnitude be-
fore,” an agency statement read. While experts were leery of attributing the disaster to
global warming, the “extreme rainfall event” of July 2007 was consistent with forecasts
of what climate change will bring.
Similar statements were made in Australia three years later . After a decade of
drought, torrential rains arrived in Queensland in late 2010, creating record-breaking
floods that killed dozens and caused millions of dollars' worth of damage. Scientists
blamed La Niña weather patterns rather than climate change, but said it was “indisput-
able” that global warming was leading to more severe storms. “People have to accept
that the game's changed,” said Chris Cocklin, an environmental scientist at James Cook
University.
But as weather patterns change, communities with poor flood defenses will find
themselves increasingly vulnerable. This has already been hinted at by storms in usually
temperate regions of the US, such as the Northeast and Southeast.
In March 2010, two immense storms soaked Rhode Island and Massachusetts with
record-breaking precipitation. The second storm dumped almost nine inches of rain
on Providence, Rhode Island, and the Pawtuxet River crested at 20.79 feet, nearly 12