BY JARED MARGOLIS

As America grapples with the immense task of recovering from three Category 4 hurricane strikes, the whole country faces a critical question: How should we rebuild in areas most vulnerable to repeated flooding?

It's an important issue even here in the Pacific Northwest. While hurricanes aren't a problem, flooding certainly is.

Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio recently offered an answer, but it's deeply shortsighted and will cause immense environmental harm here and across the United States.

As part of the ongoing congressional debate over the Federal Emergency Management Agency's National Flood Insurance Program, Rep. DeFazio has repeatedly pushed for dangerous legislative language in the FEMA renewal bill, H.R. 2548.

If DeFazio has his way, the bill would permanently undercut protections for endangered species living in floodplain areas in Oregon and nationwide.

FEMA's flood insurance program helps provide affordable insurance to individual property owners and businesses. In exchange, communities are urged to implement floodplain management regulations to minimize risks.

But the program is more than $24 billion in the red, and Congress faces a year-end deadline to decide if or how to reform it.

DeFazio's solution is to allow FEMA to simply ignoring the needs of endangered species when mapping out floodplain risks and greenlighting areas for development. Critical habitat for highly imperiled species could be destroyed and FEMA would still provide flood insurance in those spots.

DeFazio's proposal is certainly music to the ears of powerful developers and other special interests. But it would devastate endangered wildlife and make taxpayers pay for future flood bailouts.

If the legislation were to pass, it wouldn't be FEMA's first time subsidizing endangered species habitat destruction. Twenty years ago, FEMA-subsidized development occurred in endangered Florida Key deer habitat.

A solution emerged. Federal courts required FEMA to consider risks to the endangered deer before approving irresponsible development. Development could still occur, but not in areas most important for deer recovery.

A similar issue in Oregon and Washington appears to be driving DeFazio's attempt to revise national floodplain policy. The National Marine Fisheries Service has concluded that FEMA's decision to blindly subsidize development without considering environmental harms is jeopardizing Puget Sound killer whales.

Concerned by threats to the endangered whales and 16 salmon species, the fisheries service recommended that FEMA take similar steps to what occurred in Florida to protect the key deer.

Instead, Rep. DeFazio introduced this sweeping effort to exempt FEMA from the Endangered Species Act.

The killer whale issue is no excuse for Rep. DeFazio's destructive legislation. The whales won protection only after experts at the fisheries service concluded that FEMA's actions harm endangered species. That decision can be challenged by suing the fisheries service in court, as some developers did this summer.

Whatever the legal outcome, there's no justification for DeFazio's wrongheaded legislation, which would harm hundreds of imperiled species nationwide in our rivers and coastal areas. Oregon can and must balance development with its endangered species.

Jared Margolis is senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity in Eugene.

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