Bill Clinton: “Mitzi, let me just say for the benefit of the listeners, Lake Ouachita and Lake Hamilton are two of the three lakes…”

“Mitzi, let me just say for the benefit of the listeners, Lake Ouachita and Lake Hamilton are two of the three lakes around Hot Springs where I grew up. So she and I are from the same place more or less. The answer to your question is, yes, some more can be done for some of these communities, but a lot of this flooding occurred in the 100- year flood plan, that is in areas that are projected to flood only once every 100 years. And the Governor told me today that some of this water was 4 feet above the 100-year level. It is often very difficult and quite expensive to protect beyond the 100-year flood plain. But I do believe what should happen is that, as we get the water down and we manage that process, all the communities affected need to look at what their flood protection is and to analyze whether more needs to be done. There clearly are some communities that had virtually no protection at all and that were vulnerable well below the 100-year flood level. And I think that just needs to be a community-by-community assessment. And we, of course, will work with all of them. So my short answer to you is yes, I think the Corps can help some of the communities, but I do not believe that any reasonable effort would have forestalled all of the damage here. This was an unusual flood. It will be more than a century in all probability before anything remotely like this occurs again. [A participant asked how soon Congress would act on disaster legislation and suggested an investigation of Corps of Engineers water management practices.]”