17 



Mr. Weber. That certainly is subjective on the part of the county 

 committee. We are leaving that up to them to make that decision. 

 Yes. 



Mr. VOLKMER. Is land immediately adjacent to a river eligible for 

 ECP cost-share assistance? 



Yes. However, that portion of land which is subject to — and I 

 have a question on this — frequent damage is then eligible for ECP. 

 This determination has been made by the COC on a case-by-case 

 basis. 



Mr. Weber. That is correct. 



Mr. VOLKMER. All right. Now, "frequent." What is frequent? 



Mr. Weber. We haven't defined "frequent." We basically left that 

 up to the county committee. We had previously defined frequent by 

 3 out of the last 25 years. But we have waived that requirement 

 for 1993. 



Mr. VoLKMER. So it could be, if it was once every 5 or 10 years 

 that the land was damaged — the ground may be flooded but the 

 land is not damaged. That occurs many times in many of our flash 

 floods. 



Mr. Weber. Very definitely. 



Mr. VoLKMER. And that if the damage hasn't occurred except for 

 maybe now and it hasn't occurred for 10 or 12 years, that wouldn't 

 be frequent? 



Mr. Weber. I would think that is correct, yes. 



Mr. VoLKMER. Has word on these answers gone out to our State 

 and county people? 



Mr. Weber. I believe they have. 



Mr. VOLKMER. We have been getting different answers. 



Mr. Weber. They have either gone out today or they went out 

 yesterday. 



Mr. Volkmer. That will be very helpful. 



I have another question. I have quite a few. My farmers out 

 there had a good portion of their 1992 crop under loan, and in 

 comes a flood. Now, who is responsible? Is the farmer going to 

 make the loss? Noninsured? 



Mr. Weber. Our policy would be such that the farmer takes the 

 loss, yes. 



Mr. Volkmer. I have a good question on that. Why? He didn't 

 cause the flood. There is nothing he can do about it. 



Mr. Weber. We used to cover losses that would have been associ- 

 ated with floods or tornadoes or whatever up until 3 or 4 years ago. 

 And as a result of considerable pressure on the part of the insur- 

 ance industry and others, our policy was changed to not cover those 

 losses. And that is the policy at this point, good or bad. 



Mr. Volkmer. Mr. Chairman, I have — especially among areas 

 where the normal practice is to keep the grain where it was and 

 this year for the first time and no other time has that grain ever 

 been damaged by flood. Now we are going to say the flood is be- 

 cause of the farmer. 



Mr. Weber. We have talked about this, Mr. Volkmer, on a num- 

 ber of occasions; and at least at this point, the decision has been 

 not to change the policy. 



Mr. Volkmer. Let me point out one thing to you in your own 

 regulations that I think would show that, even the county — usually 



