Louisiana lesson

Postponing flood control projects can be a deadly mistake, history shows.

What’s happening to our neighbors suffering through the devastating floods in Louisiana touches us with a special resonance here in Houston.

Just four months after we watched flood victims from our own city floating out of their homes in everything from rafts to refrigerators, we’re once again seeing an all too familiar tableau of disaster pictures coming from the area around Baton Rouge: Subdivisions underwater, dramatic rescues, evacuations by boat and streets lined with piles of soggy carpeting and ruined furniture. The images are especially evocative for Katrina evacuees who resettled in Houston, who now ache for their families and friends in their old home state.

At least 13 people have died, more than 60,000 homes are damaged and more than 100,000 people have registered for federal disaster assistance. What’s galling is that the damage could have been mitigated by flood control projects a number of agencies have postponed for decades. And therein lies an important lesson for us in the Houston area.

As early as the 1970s, government officials reportedly discussed a number of drainage improvements for the Amite River Basin in south Louisiana, upstream from the areas devastated by this month’s flooding. After another catastrophic flood in 1983, the Baton Rouge Advocate reports there was even more discussion about building a canal, a dam and a reservoir that would have diverted some of the floodwaters that deluged Louisiana communities. Local authorities reportedly built some drainage pumps and levees and floodgates, but the bigger federal projects either never got off the ground or were never completed. Of course, the canal and the reservoir wouldn’t have prevented this month’s flooding, but by one estimate they would’ve saved up to a quarter of the homes in the basin that were damaged by floodwaters.

Here on the Texas Gulf Coast, we have our own bewildering habit of neglecting flood control measures until fate forces us into action. Project Brays, a plan to widen the channel in Brays Bayou and create four detention basins, was supposed to have been finished two years ago. Federal funding delays pushed it back to 2021, too late for people living in the Meyerland area whose homes flooded over the Memorial Day weekend of 2015.

History has proven that postponing flood control projects is an expensive and potentially deadly mistake. During the 19th century, Galveston residents argued about building a seawall, but the idea went nowhere — until the apocalyptic Great Storm of 1900 killed an estimated 8,000 people, which still holds the record as the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

And now, for the better part of a decade, we’ve discussed a proposal to build what’s nicknamed the “Ike Dike,” Texas A&M-Galveston professor Bill Merrell’s plan for a 50-mile levee and a massive floodgate across the Houston Ship Channel. Just as Galveston’s seawall would’ve protected the island during the 1900 storm, this plan could save the Houston and Galveston area from a 21st century cataclysm.

Consider this frightening scenario: If the eye of Hurricane Ike had made landfall 30 miles down the coast, Houston and Galveston would’ve felt the full force of the storm’s most powerful edge. Experts who modeled the impact paint a harrowing picture. Almost all of Galveston County would have gone underwater, along with about 20 percent of Harris County and large portions of Chambers and Brazoria County. America’s largest petrochemical complex would’ve been knocked out of business for months, doing untold damage to the nation’s economy. And there’s no telling how many people who didn’t evacuate would have died.

So as we extend our heartfelt sympathies to our neighbors in Louisiana, let their loss offer us a lesson. Just as that state’s long-delayed flood mitigation projects could have saved countless homes and lives, the Ike Dike could save us in the Houston and Galveston area from a catastrophe that’s almost beyond comprehension. Let’s hope we don’t look back someday and regret leaving that idea on the drawing boards.