Flood plans need fast fix

Residents of the swamped towns along the Delaware now face the depressing task of cleaning up after the third major flood there in 21 months. Damage this time could be similar to the $30 million cost of the April 2005 flood.

More depressing still, there is no reason to say residents won't be suffering another bad case of deja damp come the height of hurricane season in a couple of months, or with spring rains and snow melt next year.

River dwellers and emergency planners once took it for granted that a ruinous flood would occur only every 50 years or so. That comfortable assumption has been washed away, along with the complacency that went with it.

The challenge for citizens is to clean up and rebuild, with an eye for preparing for another inundation at any time. But New Jersey and the other states in the Delaware River Basin need to move quickly, too.

The states cannot stop the major rain storms that turn the river into a dangerous torrent. But a series of mitigation strategies can help ease some of the problems.

Buffer zones along the streams and rivers that feed into the Delaware need to be created and expanded, and landowners encouraged to forgo mowing the vegetation that will spring up there. The bigger the buffers and the brushier they are, the more they can slow runoff -- and filter out pollutants before they reach the streams.

Many existing flood maps are badly out of date. The maps must be updated to provide a more accurate picture of what land should be put off limits to development. And in areas that have long been developed, it is time to start having the difficult conversations about whether some homes or buildings should simply be bought out. This will be painful, but emergency aid is too scarce to be used to rebuild properties that will only be damaged or destroyed again.

New Jersey will propose new stream encroachment regulations later this summer that promise to be much tougher than those they replace, and Environmental Commissioner Lisa Jackson has already begun to set aside money for map upgrades. Last week's rain and floods provided another demonstration that these efforts must be accelerated, despite the pressures of the state budget crunch.

The same is true in New York and Pennsylvania, where environmental regulations generally are more lenient than in the Garden State. The Delaware did not rise so high last week because of rains in New Jersey so much as because of deluges in Northeastern Pennsylvania and upstate New York.

Better stream buffers and tighter controls on runoff and flood plain development can't guarantee the Delaware will always obediently stay within its banks. There will be times when too much rain simply falls too quickly. But better mitigation efforts can reduce the physical and emotional toll when nature unleashes its power.