Expressing Support and Sympathy for Victims of Devastating Flooding that Occurred in Ohio

EXPRESSING SUPPORT AND SYMPATHY FOR VICTIMS OF DEVASTATING FLOODING THAT OCCURRED IN OHIO -- (House of Representatives - November 06, 2007)

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Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Thank you distinguished Chairman LYNCH, and my dear friend from our delegation Congressman JIM JORDAN.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in support of House Resolution 728, which speaks to the issue of the flooding throughout Ohio in August of this year.

Congressman Jordan and I stood shoulder to shoulder with the late Congressman Paul Gillmor in Findlay to survey the devastating 100-year flood level. This flooding ripped through the heart of many small towns in northwest Ohio, burying our communities in feet of mud and water while washing away the dreams of so many today.

We know there are probably over $100 million worth of damages. We owe so much to all the emergency workers--to the fire, to the police, to the local officials like Mayor Iriti, who I thought, did an outstanding job--for trying to address this situation, which wasn't any of their fault or our fault. You had 15 inches of rain within 24 hours; and this flood truly was different.

Instead of simply devastating our community, the flood also sent a shock wave through all of us on the challenge of fresh water management that our region, our very flat region, faces.

It is ironic that in Ohio we were talking about too much water at a time when, now, Georgia and the southeastern States are experiencing record droughts. We know in our region the status quo is not acceptable. We were very pleased that Secretary Chertoff joined us and offered the continuing help of FEMA to address the damage from these floods in August. We knew that our region had potential water management problems. But we never thought they would come now so quickly. We had launched a watershed management partnership in the Western Lake Erie Basin to handle the growing levels of storm water runoff.

The Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have driven forward a remarkable partnership that is unique in its scope anywhere in the country for what it is trying to accomplish. At the center of this assessment is the understanding that we must better manage our fresh water asset for the future.

It is our competitive advantage, without question, in the Great Lakes States. We have been buffeted in our region by globalization, but we will not give up our greatest asset. We know we must manage it with a comprehensive basinwide solution.

I think this flooding was a real clarion call to people in our region. We saw the levels of damage and now having to remediate after the fact. But had we had in place structures and systems to handle this level of water, we would not have had the level of damage that we experienced. We know that the level of rainfall was extraordinarily large, but the point is, we were not properly prepared for it, and we have now had this clarion call.

We were very fortunate that the loss of life was minimized, but, nonetheless, people are still digging out. I think this resolution is a very important step forward as we try to handle this precious global asset of fresh water in our region in a much, much wiser way so that we can avoid the flooding of the future.

Even Marathon Oil had eight feet of water in its corporate headquarters in Findlay, Ohio. Business leaders, the chamber, a broad band of public officials and private sector leadership across the region recognize we can't go through this again. We have to think about dry dams. We have to think of reservoirs. We have to think of ways to avoid hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage and put those dollars to work avoiding that kind of disaster in the future.

In recognizing all of those who helped to handle this enormous tragedy that befell our area, we also look to the future and the fact that we have the Western Lake Erie Basin partnership as a building block toward the future in order to make the future better than the past and to learn the lessons that history has now taught us.

I am very pleased to join my colleagues here today, Congressman Lynch, who has taken such great leadership on this measure. We, in Ohio, appreciate the response of all the emergency personnel who did so very much, and to the people who suffered, and also to Congressman JIM JORDAN for bringing this to the floor today. We are joined hand in hand as we move forward together in northern Ohio to better manage our fresh water asset for future generations.

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