Houston is paying it today. Whose city will pay for it next?
The Republican administration is going to make everything worse for everybody. Trump rolled back regulations intended to support better standards for infrastructure projects — he apparently thinks the way to encourage investment in infrastructure is to allow it to be half-assed infrastructure.
An executive order issued by Trump earlier this month revoked an Obama-era directive that had established flood-risk standards for federally funded infrastructure projects built in areas prone to flooding or subject to the effects of sea-level rise – like many of those now sinking in Texas.
Houston already has some of the laxest building regulations for structures in potential flood zones and the president wants to spread that policy across the US.
“It makes no sense,” Steve Ellis, vice-president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said. “Taxpayers deserve to have the assurance that if they provide assistance to a community to build or rebuild, it’s done in a way that isn’t going to cost taxpayers money in the future.”
Setting better flood-risk standards wouldn’t have helped Houston — Texas has been busy doing things half-assedly for generations, for short term gain — but they would help build for the future. If we have one.
Trump does not have an infrastructure policy. If you listen carefully you can hear: he only has an infastructure policy, not an infRastructure policy.
To quote perhaps the most-relevant lyrics in Confounds the Science:
Well, look on the bright side.
All those developers who build in what is now a giant flood plain underwater in Houston, already got paid and are long gone.
Leaving the US taxpayers, local taxpayers, and the current residents to pay for all the flood damage.
It’s all very Lonnytarian.
According to the MSN, Houston has no zoning laws.
You can build whatever you want, wherever you want.
Still, it’s not obvious what they could have done to withstand a storm with
4 feet of water in a few days.
I’ve been there before. It’s very flat. It’s not too high above sea level. Wikipedia: Downtown stands about 50 feet (15 m) above sea level, and the highest point in far northwest Houston is about 125 feet (38 m) in elevation. It’s close to the ocean.
It’s sort of like New Orleans. No matter what they do, it is always going to have problems with large storms with lots of rain.
Follow-up to raven@4, A typical standard is to build to withstand an (up to?) “100 year” event. (There are exceptions for various reasons, not always sensible.) I do not know what standard is used in Huston (or indeed anyplace in Texas), but it would be indeed an extraordinary one for the current situation, which is apparently an 800 year event.
And a shoutout for not only all the emergency services and first-responders, but the also the many volunteers. Bravo!
(I assume various donations are, or soon will, become useful, but have no details.)
New Orleans has problems with maintenance as well. A lot of their pumps are not working and drains are blocked, last I heard.
It would be nice if Texas would stop sending climate change deniers to Congress, too, so maybe something could be done to mitigate such storms in the first place.
This is a problem everywhere in the US. In my own state, the governor has cut: fire fighting, ambulance, road maintenance, and any project having to do with water (like old and failing dams, for instance) and on and on it goes. Our state representatives write bills for these projects, they pass, the governor vetoes them. Because it’s far more important for her to fill the pockets of her rich oil buddies than to provide actual services for the people of the state, I guess. Who knows. It’s very stupid; instead of being PROactive, we are being REactive.
# 5 I assume various donations are, or soon will, become useful, but have no details.
And if people are donating send money not goods unless there is a direct request from a major NGO like the Red Cross.
Typically donations in kind tie up staff and valuable shipping and storage space when the “in kind” materials may or not be useful.
BTW, has anyone noticed that the Texas storm damage is fairly minor by internatinal standards http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/08/floods-kill-1200-india-nepal-bangladesh-170826230610924.html
Of course, no mountains == no landslides in Texas.
Not to mention, weakening flood-risk standards affects the poor the hardest. Generally, the people who live in floodplains can’t afford to live anywhere else (because they choose to spend their income on such extravagant luxuries as food, clothing, or transportation (that’s snark, just to be clear)). And if they do have the money to try to buy flood insurance, well, though the government may say it’s okay to build there, insurers will see it’s in a floodplain, and make rates effectively unaffordable. So they’re left with going to the government for flood insurance – to a program that Republicans are trying to kill.
But hey! The developers who built and sold the place got paid, and they’re the ones who vote Republican, so they’re the only people that count. (again, just to be clear, that’s bitter, bitter sarcasm.)
Cross-posted with the Political Madness thread:
It’s like a scene from a dystopian sci-fi film.
The only “in kind” request for help I’ve seen is for relatively local people with boats capable of operating in shallow water.
There are various lists of various reputable charities circulating on twitter – I’ll try and get links later. I know the Texas Diaper Bank was one of the ones going around.
List of charities, with some advice for locals, phone numbers etc. here:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/hurricane-harvey-14076152
blf@5: When it comes to flood protection, designing something to withstand a “100 year event” seems to be awfully fatalistic. The Delta Works in the Netherlands for example put the “acceptable risk” for a complete failure of the flood protection system at once in 10,000 years for South and North Holland (that is the urban area containing, inter alia, Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Leiden — in other words, basically “everything” of the Netherlands that is known to outsiders). Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works
(disclaimer: I used to live in the Netherlands — maybe some of their pride concerning “keeping the country dry” has rubbed off)
Just as a reminder, and not to diminish its significance, Texas is not the only place that is suffering from worse flooding. Climate change goes after everyone.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/08/floods-kill-1200-india-nepal-bangladesh-170826230610924.html
Yep. I’m no fan of the US Army Corps of Engineers — who for the purposes of this comment I will pretend are responsible for all dams, levees, and similar in the States (they aren’t) — with perhaps the main reason being they have historically seen water as something to be fought and defeated. That view leads to stuff like concreting over floodplains (to channel the water away), straightening and dredging and sometimes concreting riverbeds (so the water can channel away faster), and so on. Which perhaps “works” until there is too much water; that is, at some point it fails to scale. That is what (in this context) the “N year event” is trying to quantify, the point at which the system fails to scale / cope.
The Dutch approach of scaled management is getting some attention, but I have no idea to what extent the Corps is interested.
I never understood this idea either. Why build something that will only last 100 years at most? Shouldn’t you be planning for something that will still be standing when your grandchildren have grandchildren?
That is not what “100-year flood” means. What it means is the facility is expected to be able to cope with an incident that has a 1% chance of happening in any one year (see Ye Pfffft! of All Knowledge or the USGS).
Having said that, the situation could actually be better if dams in the States did have a planned 100-year lifetime. Generally, they don’t. Dams in the States are typically built to have only 50-year lifetimes (there are exceptions, and I have no idea how this compares Internationally). And a large number of States-side dams have already exceeded their 50-years planned lifespan. (Speculating, the 50-year typical planned lifetime is probably related to most States dams being earthen (and/or private?)?)
What’s this complication of a cube shit? A 2 mile cube should do the job.
As for dam lifetimes, the oldest reservoir dam in Germany was built in the 15th century. I’m just saying.
Forgot to add: … still existing …
Some wag on the cable news said it was “enough water to run Niagara Falls for 15 days”.
The problem with moving from a 100 year plan to a 10,000 year one is simply one of money, but it is am immense amount of money. To protect New Orleans from a 1,000 year hurricane would cost about $150 billion. I haven’t seen any number for a 10,000 year storm, but probably ten times that amount. But thats just New Orleans, if you wanted to armor the entire hurricane zone, or just the major cities to protect against a 10,000 year flood the bill would run to the hundreds of trillions.
At some point it is actually cheaper to just let one city flood a year and rebuild it than to try and protect them all.
I’ve lived in Houston since 1979. During that time, I have seen a LOT of floods. When I worked downtown as a courier, I can remember standing in the portico of Jones Hall and watching a Houston Chronicle box cartwheeling down Louisiana street in one particularly bad storm. That was the one where the Basement of NCNB flooded and a woman drowned when her elevator took her down into the sunken parking garage to leave. The same area flooded in the early 1900’s to almost the same degree.
I remember going down with some other couriers to see the overpasses on I-10 coming out of the water like an old school sea monster. Not sure which flood that was, some time in the 90’s
I was in a third floor apartment right in front of Addicks dam during Allison, which is the dam they opened the floodgates on earlier this week, flooding my old neighborhood. That one was weird because I never even saw much bad weather and hardly any rain. The next day, I went into town and saw cars stalled out in a dozen intersections, no water so I had no idea what happened. I got to Brother Sam’s house and he and his girlfriend looked exhausted. They told me to walk down to the Hazard Street overpass on 59 and see if their car was still there. A lot of the neighbors had parked their cars on the overpass hoping they wouldn’t flood. The street was completely blocked up. looking off the bridge over 59, I could just see the stacks on an 18 wheeler poking out of the water.
For Ike, I lost power for 4 days. Dad was out for 14 days. Much of which he spent in the hospital as he was getting near the end, Ike didn’t help though. On the day after the storm, I was so hot that I finally went down and got in the apartment pool, even though it was had tons of branches, leaves and pine needles in the water. I got a bad rash and couldn’t sleep that night. But, it was 93 degrees at midnight and no AC so I probably wouldn’t have slept anyway. Believe you me, when your power has been off for a few days and it suddenly comes back on, it is like the best Christmas present I ever got. Electric light, refrigerator/freezer, working TV and cable and the king of them all: Air Conditioning.
For this storm, there wasn’t much you could do except sit in the house and wait. You can watch the news and drive yourself crazy trying to figure out where that is, is it close to you (For those of you who don’t know, Houston is HUGE) or you can watch something else and answer the many, many e-mails, text messages, phone calls and Facebook posts about how you are, where you are, are you OK? etc., etc. etc. There isn’t anywhere to go and there isn’t much of anything to do. On Monday, I managed to hit the grocery store on 529 and Barker Cypress. I got pretty much everything I wanted and then spend an hour in line to pay for everything. This morning, I came into work. I even managed to drive through someplace and get a hot breakfast (Hurricane Menu). Out of 10 people in my immediate section, there are only 3 people here. Everyone else is either unable to get over Addicks to get here or they are dealing with flooded houses. I feel incredibly lucky. I never even got water in my yard. I spent most of yesterday and Monday on the back porch, watching the rain and my cats sleep. Before it got dark last night, I saw blue sky and sun for the first time since Thursday. This morning, my driveway is dry.
I want you all to know that in this time of trouble, I personally appreciate the people on here who are looking to help. This is a disaster of Biblical(pun intended) proportions and there are a lot of people here who really need the help. So, anything you can do will be appreciated.
I don’t really appreciate some of PZ’s comments about my city. But that is an argument for another day.
“An executive order issued by Trump earlier this month revoked an Obama-era directive that had established flood-risk standards for federally funded infrastructure projects built in areas prone to flooding or subject to the effects of sea-level rise – like many of those now sinking in Texas.”
His timing could not have been better. One more strike against the weakest hitting president of all time.
Can’t wait for “the Ump” (that’s all of us speaking in unison) to holler, “You’re Out!!”
Reminds you of, “You’re Fired!!” doesn’t it?