RAPID CITY - During a recent public-comment meeting of a committee studying Rapid City's flood-zone rules, citizen Ken Edel raised a red flag of warning.

"After 35-plus years, we've been complacent about flood control," Edel told the committee. "Just look at what happened in Hermosa."

Edel is coordinator of Rapid City's Adopt-a-Creek program, so he's intimately familiar with hazards encroaching on Rapid Creek, which in 1972 flash-flooded into a torrent, killing 238 people.

The Hermosa flood he referred to was Aug. 17. No lives were lost, but homes built in a floodplain were washed away.

The Rapid City flood committee is meeting because earlier this year, a developer proposed building condominiums west of Braeburn Addition along Rapid Creek, just upstream from Canyon Lake. The area had been devastated by the 1972 flood.

The developer has since withdrawn those plans, but they would have met current city flood-zone rules. Now, the Floodplain Development Policy Committee is considering whether to toughen those rules.

Was Edel right? Has the city's memory of the 1972 flood faded? After all, the median age in Rapid City is 35, which means half of the people who live here were born after the flood. Many others moved here after the flood.

Still, at a meeting last week to gather public comments, memories seemed fresh. Only about 30 people showed up, but many told stories from 1972, and most urged tighter flood rules. A lone dissenter warned of "too much bureaucracy."

"We need to respect and stay out of these floodplains," said U.S. Forest Service hydrologist Les Gonyer, who spoke as a private citizen. "Mother Nature is doing her thing."

Committee member Tom Hennies, a former state legislator who retired as Rapid City's police chief, was a young police lieutenant the night of the flood. He grilled Gonyer on whether a hydrologist could guarantee that development at Braeburn Addition would not harm downstream properties.

"Anytime you enter the floodplain, there is an adverse effect," Gonyer said.

Dr. Ray Burnett, who narrowly escaped a 4-foot wall of water the night of June 9, 1972, told the committee that after the flood he had to examine bodies kept in a refrigerated truck. "It was the worst thing I've ever done in my life," he said.

A tearful Rebecca Jones, daughter of former Public Works Director Leonard Swanson, had to cut short her testimony about her father's experience after the flood. Swanson is ill and couldn't attend Monday's meeting.

Jones said her father had the difficult job of telling hundreds of homeowners they could never return to their property in the floodway - a heartbreaking but necessary task.

"Please do not allow loopholes in our floodplain ordinance," Jones told the committee.

Some of the most powerful testimony came by mail.

Don Barnett, who now lives in Denver, was 29 years old on June 9, 1972. He was also mayor of Rapid City. For the next three years, he guided the city through a $170 million flood recovery that federal agencies still hold up as a model.

Now a consultant for a company that plans developments on "environmentally impaired land," such as old military bases, Barnett also speaks throughout the country on Rapid City's flood recovery.

In a letter to the flood-policy committee, Barnett wrote: "Our theme in l972 was very simple: The floodplain is a wonderful place to visit and a stupid place to live!"

Barnett has also become a student of the history of floods on Rapid Creek. For a presentation to FEMA 20 years ago, for example, Barnett developed a list of Rapid City floods and their consequences:

* 1907: Four killed.

* 1920: Eight killed.

* 1952: Serious property damage.

* 1962: Two floods, one destroying 120 mobile homes and the other forcing 1,500 to evacuate their homes.

Barnett also cites the late Rapid City economist Earle Hausle, who studied Lakota history in the Black Hills. Hausle reported that tribes seldom camped near creeks that flowed out the east side of the Black Hills.

"Too many floods! Too many bears!" Hausle told Barnett.

Modern hydrologists are taking the flood history back even further in the Black Hills.

USGS hydrologist Dan Driscoll told the flood-policy committee earlier this month that a preliminary "paleoflood" hydrology study suggests at least three other major floods of French Creek in the Black Hills in the past 1,000 years.

Driscoll said a similar, more extensive study could be done on Rapid Creek - given the funding and the time. However, Driscoll said ,improved statistical techniques already are suggesting 1972-size floods are not unusual.

Mark T. Anderson, head of the USGS South Dakota Water Science Center in Rapid City, said the "upslope" weather conditions that produced both the 1972 flood and the Aug. 17 flood in Hermosa were no longer considered rare.

"Two floods we used to think of as 100-year floods have happened within 30 years," he told the committee.

Rapid City Growth Management Director Marcia Elkins, who is working with the flood-policy committee, asked Driscoll and Anderson directly whether big floods "happen more often than we originally anticipated."

Driscoll, a cautious scientist, paused before answering. "I guess I won't disagree," he said. "I'd be reluctant to live in these areas."

Barnett put it almost as bluntly. "Engineers and FEMA officials warned the council that the 100-year flood definition was not a biblical definition," he wrote to the committee.

"Future floods, greater than the 1972, will occur again on the Rapid Creek floodplain."

Barnett added: "It is my sincere hope the city will reflect upon the wisdom of the 1972 generation on the Rapid City Common Council."

Rapid City banker John Brewer, who also serves the committee, said comments from experts and members of the public suggested to him the city's floodplain policy "doesn't go far enough."

That's the question the committee will explore over the next two months.

The next committee meets Oct. 10. Its recommendation to the Rapid City Council is due in December.

Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com