Spend wisely by creating an Ike Dike
There is a saying that soldiers too often prepare to fight the last war.
Human nature, after all, is to apply what we’ve learned most recently. What’s difficult is learning from the past while also forecasting future threats.
Following Hurricane Harvey, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett have called for an overhaul of regional flood control efforts. The recent flooding gives impetus for taking long overdue action, but let’s make sure we prepare for the next generation of storms, not just last month’s.
Every hurricane has its idiosyncrasies. Harvey was a slow, meandering walker, dumping 20 trillion gallons of rain on Texas. Irma was larger and windier but delivered only 10 trillion gallons of water to Florida as it jogged straight to the Carolinas.
Different storms hitting different parts of Houston would cause very different types of damage with dramatically different implications for our city, our economy and our nation.
Houstonians today want to know why 136,000 homes filled with water from the third 500-year flood event in two years. As people repair their homes and replace lost belongings, they rightfully want assurances that another flood next year will not wipe them out again.
Emmett, a Republican, has called for a complete reassessment of the region’s flood control strategy, to include buying thousands of homes, creating a regional flood control district and seeking authority from the state to levy a sales tax for the effort.
Even conservative state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, RHouston, says tightfisted Republican senators are discussing new storm protections.
“I think everybody that looks at Harvey with a rational mind wants to change some things in the future,” he said.
Emmett, Turner and Houstonians, though, should not focus solely on flooded bayous and creeks. Most of the damage from a typical hurricane comes from the surge of seawater ahead of the storm and high winds.
A Category 5 hurricane striking Houston would bring a whole different kind of disaster. A 20-foot storm surge moving through Galveston Bay and up the Houston Ship Channel would inundate Johnson Space Center, Texas City, the Bayport industrial complex, and dozens of refineries and petrochemical facilities. Not to mention thousands of homes.
Federal, state and local governments have spent millions of dollars studying the potential impact of just such a storm, and they paint a nightmarish scenario of ruined lives, crippled infrastructure and environmental ruin.
Harvey reached Houston as a mere tropical storm, and it managed to shut down a quarter of the nation’s oil refining capacity for a week. Operators had to close critical pipelines carrying fuel to the southeastern U.S., creating a gas panic along the lower East Coast.
True fuel shortage
If a Category 5 storm shut down those facilities for weeks or months, the U.S. would experience a true fuel shortage and high prices nationwide, dragging down the economy. Gulf Coast refineries also supply the rest of the hemisphere, and losing them would spike fuel prices worldwide.
Closer to home, massive infrastructure damage would trigger major losses at Houston’s largest employers and in financial markets.
Yet even though this particular future threat is perfectly predictable, we don’t take it seriously because we haven’t experienced it.
Houston needs a barrier to keep seawater out of the Ship Channel, what experts have dubbed a coastal spine. Consensus has built around a Texas A&M design called the Ike Dike, a seawall from the Bolivar Peninsula across the bay to Galveston. Ahead of a storm, an underwater gate would rise to keep the storm surge out.
Republican congressmen Randy Weber and Brian Babin support the idea, and Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush has asked President Donald Trump to dedicate $15 billion toward its construction.
Turner reiterated the importance of the Ike Dike on Tuesday.
“We cannot talk about rebuilding ... if we do not build the coastal spine,” he said.
In an op-ed for this paper a month before Harvey struck, former mayoral candidate Bill King called on officials to stop dithering and build the Ike Dike.
“The sad history of projects like this is that no action has been taken until a catastrophic storm hits, killing a bunch of people,” King wrote.
He’s right, and with limited resources, neighborhood groups and business leaders will debate where to prioritize our storm protection dollars.
A moral imperative
While the tragedy of Harvey still tears at our hearts, logic dictates that the coastal spine must stop any flood control list. The petrochemical and refining capacity along the Ship Channel is critical for our nation’s economy and security. Preventing the environmental disaster that a 20-foot storm surge would create is a moral imperative.
Turner says we shouldn’t have to make these kinds of choices, but that’s overly optimistic. There will be tough choices ahead, and we need to make them in a way that protects the most people, and that’s more than just those who live here.