Many of the recommendations went into the 'too hard' box and floated in a bureaucratic malaise until the memory of the flood faded away,

The half-life of the memory of a flood is very short. You can already hear it in Washington, D.C.: New Orleans where?

In spite of 70 years of federal flood control efforts and nearly 40 years of federal flood insurance, the costs of flooding continue to rise and there is no federal policy to provide direction for future actions.

Communities around the country continue to be at risk.

That's a lot of territory. Never has the damage been so great. The question is, are the people going to come back? I don't think anybody really knows.

It gives scant attention to environment and social costs of the kind we saw in the eyes of the displaced families