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The latest news from every corner of the state, including policy emerging from Missouri's capitol.

Missouri Gets Buyouts For Flood-Prone Homes More Than Any Other State

About 80% of the buyouts in Missouri took place after the Great Flood of 1993, when the Mississippi and Missouri rivers overflowed their banks, killing 50 and causing $15 billion in damages.
David Kovaluk | St. Louis Public Radio
About 80% of the buyouts in Missouri took place after the Great Flood of 1993, when the Mississippi and Missouri rivers overflowed their banks, killing 50 and causing $15 billion in damages.

When Amy Papian bought her three-bedroom house in University City 31 years ago, she thought she’d never leave.

Her bedroom had a large window that overlooked the backyard — and in the summertime, the sweet smell of honeysuckle drifted inside the house. 

But then four floods invaded her home over 15 years, and she decided she’d had enough. After the last flood in 2008, a neighbor’s body washed up in her backyard. Papian and her daughters moved out, and the city purchased their home through a voluntary buyout program run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The federal government has stepped in to help local municipalities in Missouri buy out thousands of properties — so they can be demolished. St. Louis Public Radio's Shahla Farzan visits one St. Louis resident who took a buyout after her home flooded repeatedly in less than 20 years.

Papian, 71, is one of more than 5,100 property owners in Missouri who have taken buyouts since 1990. Missouri has the highest number of FEMA-bought properties of any state, according to data National Public Radio acquired in a Freedom of Information lawsuit against the federal agency.

Taking a buyout was the responsible thing to do, because it wouldn’t be right to put someone else through another flood, Papian said.

“Suppose I had sold the house to someone else, and suppose they were the ones whose bodies they had found,” Papian said. “Would that not be on me? You have a choice to make at that point. It’s a moral choice.”

Amy Papian holds a photo of her former home on Wilson Avenue in University City. The house was demolished in 2011, after University City purchased it through the FEMA buyout program.
Credit Shahla Farzan | St. Louis Public Radio
Amy Papian holds a photo of her former home on Wilson Avenue in University City. The house was demolished in 2011, after University City purchased it through the FEMA buyout program.

Missouri has the largest number of FEMA buyouts in the U.S.

About 80% of the buyouts in Missouri took place after the Great Flood of 1993, when the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers overflowed their banks, killing 50 people and causing $15 billion in damage across nine states. The flood of 1993 was a turning point for the FEMA program, said Jonathan Remo, a geography professor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

“There was this nexus between local, state and federal governments coming together to rethink how to address these losses related to the floods,” Remo said. “And given the magnitude of 1993, there seemed to be a lot of willing participants.”

More than 25 years later, thousands of Missouri residents and businesses are still in areas with high flood risk.

The federal program aims to move as many residents out of harm’s way as possible, particularly those who’ve experienced multiple floods, said David Maurstad, director of mitigation and federal insurance administrator for FEMA.

“We want to reduce disaster suffering, try to break the repeated cycle of disaster, repair, disaster, repair, over and over again,” Maurstad said.Loading...

After the 1993 floods, FEMA officials learned it was more effective to buy multiple houses in an area than to do so one at a time, Maurstad said.

Local officials apply for buyouts on behalf of homeowners. FEMA pays 75% of the cost to purchase the properties, while state and local governments cover the rest.

Officials then demolish the buildings and convert the areas to open space, which cannot be redeveloped.

In University City, the price tag to demolish 26 houses along Wilson Avenue came to $4 million, of which FEMA paid $3 million. A state grant covered $461,000 of the cost, and the city drew the remaining $539,000 from its reserves.

Buying properties may cost less than repeated flood repairs 

The investment pays off in the long term, said David Stokes, executive director of the Great Rivers Habitat Alliance, a nonprofit that works to preserve flood plains.

“To buy out these properties might be a large short-term expenditure, but that’s far, far better than paying for emergency repairs and emergency rescues and all the other things that can come if people or businesses continue in these locations,” Stokes said.Loading...

The number of properties FEMA has purchased has fallen sharply since the aftermath of the 1993.  Increased competition for FEMA funding could have played a role, Stokes said.

“Between Superstorm Sandy, the hurricanes in Florida, the hurricane in Houston, and now the flood of 2019, it seems that FEMA is dealing with disasters every year,” Stokes said. “It’s hard for them when they’re waiting on more funding and another major disaster hits.”

Demand for buyouts is likely to grow in Missouri and nationwide, as research predicts increased flooding from climate change and river constriction from levees and manmade structures. Near-record flooding along the Mississippi River recently forced residents in West Alton, Grafton and along River Des Peres in St. Louis to evacuate their homes.

Congress approved $140 million for flood-related disaster aid this year, which represents an increase over past years, said Maurstad, of FEMA.

When flooding makes homes less welcome

Amy Papian vividly remembered the night she and her daughter’s boyfriend evacuated during the flash flooding of 2008.

“I heard a great big bang,” Papian said. “That’s what woke me up. And I rushed downstairs to see what it was, and the water was already three or four steps up to the living room. I screamed, ‘Chris, put on your pants and grab a cat!’”

The city demolished her house and others on Wilson Avenue in 2011. The grassy area is now bordered by overgrown bush honeysuckle.

Before the flood, Papian loved spending time in the backyard. Finding her neighbor’s body snagged in the honeysuckle bushes changed that.

Amy Papian, shown in this photo from 1996, loved spending time in her yard on Wilson Avenue in University City. But after a neighbor's body washed up behind her home during a flash flood in 2008, Papian and her daughters stopped using the backyard.
Credit Courtesy Amy Papian
Amy Papian, shown in this photo from 1996, loved spending time in her yard on Wilson Avenue in University City. But after a neighbor's body washed up behind her home during a flash flood in 2008, Papian and her daughters stopped using the backyard.

“After that, we were forced to come back to the house and live there, and we never went in the backyard,” she said. “We never had any more barbecues, we never did any more gardening. That was just part of the house we didn’t use anymore.”

Papian now lives at the top of a hill in St. John. But on a recent visit to where her house used to stand in University City, she felt nostalgic.

“I know that flooding has gotten worse,” Papian said, “but if it wasn’t for the river, I absolutely would have stayed here for the whole rest of my life.”

Follow Shahla on Twitter: @ShahlaFarzan

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Send questions and comments about this story to feedback@stlpublicradio.org

Copyright 2019 St. Louis Public Radio

Shahla Farzan
Shahla Farzan is a reporter at St. Louis Public Radio. She comes most recently from KBBI Public Radio in Homer, Alaska, where she covered issues ranging from permafrost thaw to disputes over prayer in public meetings. A science nerd to the core, Shahla spent six years studying native bees, eventually earning her PhD in ecology from the University of California-Davis. She has also worked as an intern at Capital Public Radio in Sacramento and a podcaster for BirdNote. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, combing flea markets for tchotchkes, and curling up with a good book.
Eli Chen is the science and environment reporter at St. Louis Public Radio. She comes to St. Louis after covering the eroding Delaware coast, bat-friendly wind turbine technology, mouse love songs and various science stories for Delaware Public Media/WDDE-FM. Before that, she corralled robots and citizen scientists for the World Science Festival in New York City and spent a brief stint booking guests for Science Friday’s live events in 2013. Eli grew up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, where a mixture of teen angst, a love for Ray Bradbury novels and the growing awareness about climate change propelled her to become the science storyteller she is today. When not working, Eli enjoys a solid bike ride, collects classic disco, watches standup comedy and is often found cuddling other people’s dogs. She has a bachelor’s in environmental sustainability and creative writing at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and has a master’s degree in journalism, with a focus on science reporting, from the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism.