ABSTRACT
The first key finding of the analysis is that large-scale acquisition of land to function as a natural reservoir for the containment of large riverine flood events is unlikely to be economically justified solely by consideration of avoided flood damages downstream. There were three circumstances that led the Corps to conclude there were net benefits for protecting NVS lands in the Charles River case: (1) significant amounts of NVS lands remained undeveloped, (2) those lands faced substantial development pressure such that the counterfactual in the absence of the project was the loss of those lands, and (3) downstream areas would sustain high levels of damage in the event of a flood. All three of these conditions were not present in the other watersheds studied.
