EDITORIAL

Our elected officials need to take action in 2018 on lessons learned from Harvey.

Our elected officials need to take action next year on lessons learned from Harvey.

As Hurricane Harvey’s astonishing rainfall rose behind Addicks Dam, Aaron Byrd peered into a computer screen at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Miss. Somebody had told him that developers had built houses in the reservoirs that were about to flood, and he needed to know how many people were endangered. So he opened up Google Earth, looked at the satellite images and beheld an ominous sight: Row upon row of houses, thousands of doomed homes, sitting directly in the flood pool.

“How did they get permission to build there?” he wondered.

That question should haunt our elected leaders this holiday season. It’s just one of many issues raised in “Developing Storm” the seven-part series of Chronicle reports probing the causes and consequences of Hurricane Harvey’s devastating floods. As the year of the costliest natural disaster in our area’s history comes to a close, government officials must resolve to take action next year on the problems exposed by this investigative reporting and the lessons our community learned during this catastrophe.

As all too many unlucky homeowners discovered, politicians in the Houston area have routinely allowed developers to build houses and commercial structures in harm’s way. Indeed, Houston and Harris County have approved 20,000 parcels of land worth $13.5 billion to be developed in or along floodways, the areas where water moves fastest after a large storm. City and county officials need to muster the political courage to prohibit new construction and major improvements to structures in flood pools and floodways.

Countless property owners living in subdivisions near the Addicks and Barker reservoirs had no idea they lived in flood pools, areas that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had designated as giant overflow tubs during catastrophic storms. State law should require that homebuyers purchasing property in those areas be notified of the danger not only in writing, but also with signage prominently posted around subdivisions built in flood pools.

For too long we’ve allowed our city to be run by developers and engineers who have a conflict of interest between private profit and public good. Mark Kilkenny and L.S. “Pat” Brown Jr. both sat on the city planning commission despite the fact that each had firms involved in building subdivisions inside the flood pools of Barker Reservoir. Steve Costello, who gets paid a $160,000 salary as the city’s current flood czar, also owned an engineering firm that was involved in construction projects within the flood pools. Costello has denied that he knew about the danger of building within the reservoir. Jim Blackburn, an environmental lawer and Rice professor, says he finds that “hard to believe.” As we wrote during the earliest days of Harvey, it is time to remove the people who got it wrong on flooding from the levers of power and start elevating those who had the foresight to warn us.

The catastrophe that struck the Houston area this year was exacerbated by a disastrously dysfunctional National Flood Insurance Program, which our reporting revealed has failed in just about every way possible. It has encouraged Americans to buy property and build homes in flood prone areas, increasing both the cost and the magnitude of disasters. For example, one home in Houston valued at $114,000 was responsible for 16 flood insurance claims that cost more than $800,000. The program is now $20 billion in debt, even though taxpayers have repeatedly bailed it out with $42 billion in loans and grants. Congress bears special blame for this ongoing mess, because special interests spending hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign cash have consistently thwarted attempts to fix it. Lawmakers in Washington must reform the nation’s flood insurance plan and put a stop to its spectacularly wasteful policies.

Hurricane Harvey also exposed the hazards posed to neighborhoods supposedly protected by levees. About 20 percent of Fort Bend County residents, roughly 143,000 people, live in areas defended by a collection of locally managed levees, which don’t offer anything approaching absolute protection against major floods. At least 900 levee-protected homes in the county flooded. If a community is going to depend upon levees, they should become stronger. Experts recommend building levees to withstand bigger floods, designing them for 500-year events instead of the current 100-year standard. Congress also needs to heed the advice of the National Committee on Levee Safety and establish a nationwide levee safety code, updating it at least once every 10 years.

Nothing poses a greater threat to the Houston area than the prospect of failing dams. The Corps of Engineers conducted detailed studies of what would happen if the Addicks and Barker Dams failed, and the reports read like an apocalyptic horror story. At least 2,500 people would die in the best case scenario, but the death toll could surpass 6,900. More than 120,000 structures would flood causing more than $22 billion in property damage. To lessen the odds of such a cataclysm, Congress should finally give the Army Corps of Engineers the money it has long sought for a feasibility study on making major changes to the dams. Among the ideas the Corps should explore are excavating the reservoirs to hold more water, buying out more properties upstream, and digging relief canals or tunnels to take the pressure off the dams during major storms.

Experts from the Netherlands who travel the world consulting with local officials after serious floods recently offered us an important observation. They’ve noticed that cities recovering from disasters have about a year to accomplish major goals and begin big infrastructure projects to prepare for the next catastrophe. After a year, they advise, memories begin to fade and the demand for action ebbs away.

As we leave 2017 behind, we need to heed that warning. Our window of opportunity is gradually closing. Let 2018 become the year that our elected officials take action on lessons learned from Hurricane Harvey.