Do mountains, slopes, valleys, lakes and seas have any advantages or benefits in Simcity 4?

I was wondering if mountains, slopes, valleys, lakes and seas have any advantages or benefits in Simcity 4. If I remember it correctly, waterpumps in Simcity 2000 had to be close to a lake or a river. Is this still the case in Simcity 4?

I was thinking of creating one big flat region with only a sea, some rivers and a few lakes. Unless there are good reasons to have a few mountains or slopes.

Landscaping do very little in SimCity 4. Land terrain - mountains, hills and cliffs - exist mainly to:

1. Allow you to simulate real world cities by importing an elevation map of existing cities, allowing you to recreate famous cities of the world
2. Give yourself a challenge, since hilly cities are much tougher to build around than a flat one.
3. Proximity to bodies of water and high elevation has a small positive effect on land value. As can be seen from the screenshot below, this effect is not very significant, but it exists.

Seas and oceans give you the ability to build seaports, ferries and beaches. Otherwise they do not affect your city in any way. Water towers and pumps can be placed anywhere, as long as there isn't water pollution.

Cliffs do not prevent the spread of air pollution, as can be seen here, the pollution spreads out equally over both sides of this steep cliff in a perfect circle.