Hard choices to fix repetitive flood areas

photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images


Is there any more to be said about Houston's flooding?  Yes, actually, quite a bit needs not just to be fixed, but rethought.   Because the truth is that this is getting to be a habit, and -- as much as Americans pride ourselves on rising up to take care of fellow American in time of disaster -- much of the damage demands long-term, comprehensive solutions that will involve taxpayers.

Comprehensive solutions will demand rational thinking about land use, zoning, climate change, mortgage and other government regulations, as well as preparedness.  Some of this post will be repetitive from several ShrinkRap blogs over the past several days, especially "Floods -- a man-made disaster" on Sept. 2.

Since I wrote that, however, I have read such a clear and informative set of two articles in Bloomsberg Businessweek that I want to share some of their thinking, with the focus on why our response must be more comprehensive than just fixing damage from a "1-in-1000" year storm.

Many people look at that "1-in-1000" years and think:  now that it's happened, it can't happen again for 999 years, so let the next century worry.   That is so wrong.   Having a hurricane gives no immunity to having another the very next year.  In any year, there is an equal, 1-in-1000 chance.  In fact, Harvey is the third 1-in-500-year flood in Houston in the last three years.  So the whole system, including ratings and predictions, must be rethought.

Bloomsberg Businessweek presents general news in addition to business news;  and I've come to value it's lucid, concise style, without partisan or hyped-up appeal.   The authors of these two articles are: Peter Coy and Christopher Flavelle for "Hard Rain, Hard Lessons" and Christopher Flavelle for "Flood Insurance Had Problems Before Harvey."  This post presents excerpts from the first article.  A subsequent one will discuss the flood insurance program.

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"Hard Rain.   Hard Lessons"

Peter Coy and Christopher Flavelle

"Houston has been wet since birth. . . .an endless swamp, [as one early explorer described it] . . . .  But Houston never let itself be hampered by its hydrology.  It spent billions patching together a mess of dams and draionage projects as it grew and grew.  It's [now] the fourth biggest city in the U.S. . . .  The consolidated metropolitan statistical area . . . is larger than the state of New Jersey.

"Harvey is a devastating reminder to Houston that nature will have its due. . . . No city could have withstood Harvey without serious harm, but Houston made itself more vulnerable than necessary.   Paving over the saw-grass prairie reduced the ground's capacity to absorb rainfall.   Flood-control reservoirs were too small.   Building codes were inadequate.  Roads became rivers, so while hospitals were open, it was almost impossible to reach them by car.

". . . . Above all, Harvey is a humanitarian disaster. . . .  Residents will return to damaged homes, vulnerable to the spread of mold.  Much of the damage, which could run to $100 billion or more by one estimate, is uninsured. . . . 

"Sprawling Houston is a can-do city whose attitude  is grow first, ask questions later.  It's the only major U.S. city without a zoning code. . . .  Voters have repeatedly opposed enacting a zoning law. . . .  Houston is suffering now from the lack of an effective plan to deal with chronic flooding. . . . 

"The homebuilders demonstrated their power again this year, when President Donald Trump reversed an Obama initiative restricting federally funded building projects in flood plains. . . .  [However] There's a glimmer of a possibility that Harvey could lead to a detente between environmentalists and Trump administration officials in charge of disaster response. . . . 

"[New FEMA Administrator Brock Long] expressed support for an Obama administration proposal to spur more local action on resilience, such as better building codes, if states want to keep getting first-dollar disaster relief from Washington.  States that didn't reduce their risks would have to cover a deductible before qualifying for federal aide.  'I don't think the taxpayer should reward risk,' Long told Bloomberg. . . . 

"Over the past decade, the federal government spent more than $350 billion on disaster recovery.  Much of the money has gone to homes that keep getting damaged;  1.3 million households have applied for federal disaster assistance money at least twice since 1998 -- many of them in the same area hit hardest by Harvey. . . .  [a Texas state legislator agreed that]  'We need to take a look at where structures are being built.' . . . 

"However important it was in the past to come to grips with flood control and construction codes, it's essential in this era of climate change. , . .   The contribution from global warming . . . . [according to meteorologists is that] the water-holding capacity of the atmosphere increases about 7% for each 1 degree Celsius increase in temperature. . . So:  warmer air, more water, bigger storms.  The temperature of the ocean is rising, too,.   Heat from the Gulf of Mexico is what fueled Harvey. . . . 

"Climate change could also explain why Harvey hovered over Houston, dropping rain on it for days instead of moving on.  Global warming tends to cause subtropical high pressure systems to expand, pushing the jet stream northward. . . .  The winds that might have pushed Harvey somewhere else were largely absent. . . . 

[There is not yet conclusive data to prove that climate change is making storms and flooding worse.   But, the authors point out, lack of proof that it is causative is not the same as proof that it is not causative.  We may just not have the data yet.]

"If climate change is a hoax, as President Trump has said, then Houstonians just got 50 inches of hoax dumped on their soaking wet beds.   They don't want to live through this again [but, if something isn't done, they will undoubtedly.] . . . . 

"Houston's clay soil doesn't absorb water quickly, so when a hard rain comes, much of it runs off to pool elsewhere.  Authorities have made matters worse by allowing developers to pave over much of Harris County and beyond;  it's spent its flood-control budget on culverts, canals, drains, levees, berms, pumps, and other "gray" (as in concrete) infrastructure to flush the water away -- but that hasn't been enough.  It builds new roads with curbs and gutters designed to channel water away from buildings.   Roads make good sluices in an ordinary storm, but in Harvey they couldn't shed their water fast enough and became rivers. . . . 

"The acreage of metro Houston that can't soak up rainfall increased by 32% from 2001 to 2011 . . . . The political difficulty of green solutions is that they require buying up and ripping out stuff that's already been built, which is expensive, or protecting existing green spaces from development, which means foregoing property tax revenue. . . .   That's especially so in Texas, which relies heavily on property taxes, since there's no state income tax. . . .

"Making a city more resilient isn't easy. . . .  One obvious solution is to curb the emission of the gases heating up the planet.  But even if countries get a lot more serious about slowing climate change, we're still going to have catastrophes.  Mitigation of the conseuences will have to be part of the answer."

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So, unless Houston wants to continue being pummeled by future Harvey's, it's going to have to make some very hard, politically hard, decisions.   No more can development and growth be the primary motive.   They need a lot of remedial work that will be horribly expensive.   It will take strong, committed leadership -- and they should start right away, while Harvey is still on everyone's mind.

First of all, they must adopt some zoning codes that stop development and home building in areas prone to flooding.    No longer can 1-in-100 years be considered acceptable as a place to build.   Second, they have to cultivate hundreds of acres of green ground space for water absorption, instead of concrete paving.  It's a great opportunity for some new parks. hiking and nature trails, woodlands.   And third, like all the rest of us, they've got to take global warming seriously.

Houston's position right on the Gulf coast, in such low, wetlands, puts them at a disadvantage no matter how well they manage all the rest.   Miami, are you listening?

Ralph