ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the varied impacts, describes a few of them in detail, and then quantifies the magnitude of the impacts based on existing and sometimes conflicting values. The flood of 1993 produced major impacts within four broad sectors: environmental effects, economic impacts, impacts to and responses by government at the local, state, and federal levels, and social disruption. Business losses affected regional sales, agricultural production, utilities, manufacturing, transportation, tourism, and recreation. However, the flood also produced some major winners in the agriculture, business, and transportation sectors. The losses to constant levees represent substantial costs, depending on which ones are rebuilt, to the federal government, to state governments, and to numerous local flood-protection districts that constructed private levees that failed to withstand the 1993 flood levels. Government entity at all levels from local to federal experienced severe impacts due to the flooding. Many government activities fell within the broad definition of "responses," but many others were more clearly "impacts".
