Flood Control Act

There are multiple laws known as the Flood Control Act. Typically, they are administered by the United States Army Corps of Engineers.

There were several major floods between 1849 and 1936 that moved Congress to pass legislation. The first significant federal flood control laws were the Swamp Land Acts of 1849 and 1850. A flood on the Mississippi River in 1874 led to the creation of the Mississippi River Commission in 1879. Booming steamboat traffic on the Missouri River and a flood in 1881 led to the creation of the Missouri River Commission in 1884, but it was abolished by the River and Harbor Act of 1902. Floods on the Mississippi, Ohio, and other rivers in the Northeast led to the Flood Control Act of 1917, which was the first act aimed exclusively at controlling floods. The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 led to substantial flood control funding. And a series of floods in 1935 and 1936 across the nation were critical in the passage of the Flood Control Act of 1936.

Read more about Flood Control Act:  List of Flood Control Acts

Famous quotes containing the words flood, control and/or act:

    Men hold themselves cheap and vile; and yet a man is a fagot of thunderbolts. All the elements pour through his system: he is the flood of the flood, and fire of the fire; he feels the antipodes and the pole, as drops of his blood: they are the extension of his personality.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    The inability to control our children’s behavior feels the same as not being able to control it in ourselves. And the fact is that primitive behavior in children does unleash primitive behavior in mothers. That’s what frightens mothers most. For young children, even when out of control, do not have the power to destroy their mothers, but mothers who are out of control feel that they may destroy their children.
    Elaine Heffner (20th century)

    Even the simple act that we call “going to visit a person of our acquaintance” is in part an intellectual act. We fill the physical appearance of the person we see with all the notions we have about him, and in the totality of our impressions about him, these notions play the most important role.
    Marcel Proust (1871–1922)