They warned us
Houston must listen to the advocates and experts who predicted the unpredictable.
Who could have predicted the disaster wrought by Hurricane Harvey?
Who could have foreseen that the Addicks Dam would overflow its spillway? Or that dangerous materials from EPA Superfund sites could be washed into floodwaters? Or that chemical companies could keep the public in the dark about toxic risks while their plants burned?
The answer, of course, is that plenty of people saw this coming.
Hydrologists and activists had long warned about how unplanned development would risk routine flooding.
Environmentalists and investigative reporters warned about the toxic threats that loomed in the east end of our city.
Climate scientists warned that a warming planet could bring stronger storms and monsoon-like rains that we experienced less than two weeks back.
How many more floods will it take, how many homes destroyed and lives lost, until Houston stops clinging to a status quo that treats these disasters as an inexorable part of life and starts listening to the people who saw it coming?
Jim Blackburn warned us. As an environmental attorney, he represented the Sierra Club in a 2011 lawsuit against the construction of the Grand Parkway that alleged continued paving of the Katy Prairie would exacerbate runoff into the Addicks and Barker reservoirs and put the dams at risk. He lost that lawsuit.
The 2016 Tax Day floods set a new record at both reservoirs. Harvey forced Addicks to overtop its spillway, a dangerous first-time event. Nearby homes might remain underwater for weeks.
David Conrad and Larry Larson warned us. They collaborated on a 1998 “Higher Ground” study that offered recommendations for flood prevention back when we still had the opportunity to implement land use regulations in undeveloped flood zones.
Did our political leaders heed that foreboding message? “They didn’t,” the duo wrote this week in the Washington Post. “Houston did some buyouts, but repetitive losses continued to mount as development pushed along mostly unfettered.”
Jackie Young warned us. The executive director of the Texas Health and Environment Alliance was an advocate for a full cleanup of the San Jacinto waste pits long before a storm struck the precariously positioned storage tanks of carcinogenic dioxins. Now it may be too late.
The Houston Air Alliance warned us. The local nonprofit has tried to force transparency on a notoriously opaque chemicals industry. When an Arkema facility caught fire during Harvey, the company refused to reveal the full truth about what dangerous materials might exist at the site. Seven first responders who became ill after the emergency are now suing the company in civil court, and we hope that a criminal investigation will follow.
Harvey was a catastrophe. The Tax Day flood in 2016 was a catastrophe. The Memorial Day flood in 2015 was a catastrophe, and so were the litany of other major flooding events that have struck our city. One-hundred-year floods have become one-year floods. Yet far too many developers, lobbyists and politicians want to turn their backs to the potential death and destruction. Think of it as a man who survived a series of heart attacks but argues that, since it didn’t kill him, there’s no reason to stop eating cheeseburgers and fries twice a day.
We need to stop yielding political power to those who insist there’s little we can or should do to keep us safe. Because nothing can be further from the truth. Plenty of Houstonians warned us. They’ve spent years futilely trying to turn their ideas into action, only to see their efforts quashed by a political structure that insists there’s no improving upon unregulated concrete, and no avoiding a flood.
This political structure was exemplified by former Harris County Flood Control District Executive Director Mike Talbott, who refused to study global warming and its impact on our region, who dismissed warnings about runoff from a developed Katy Prairie, and denigrated concerns from scientists and conservationists as “anti-development.”
Talbott may have left office, but that philosophy of development at any cost remains the status quo around Commissioners Court, City Hall and the state Legislature.
Hydrologists, environmentalists, scientists and activists offered a prescient vision of destruction that went ignored. If Houston wants to rebuild a resilient city, then we must lift those with true foresight out of the political wilderness and put them in proximity to the levers of power.
Harvey was a catastrophe. The Tax Day flood in 2016 was a catastrophe. The Memorial Day flood in 2015 was a catastrophe, and so were the litany of other major flooding events that have struck our city. Onehundred-year floods have become one-year floods.