‘We are sitting ducks’
With Houston doing little after Harvey to mitigate the impact of a potential major hurricane like Ida, experts fear …
If Hurricane Ida had veered west and hit Galveston, its 15-foot storm surge could have devastated the city and plowed up the Houston Ship Channel, smashing into residential communities and industrial facilities; its 150 mph winds could have left much of the Houston area without power for weeks, experts said.
The region dodged yet another bullet last Sunday when Ida made landfall in Louisiana, inflicting catastrophic damage on its residents, property and oil-driven economy.
But Houston’s streak of relatively good luck since Hurricane Harvey four years ago is unlikely to last as climate change is expected to bring about more destructive hurricanes and sea level rise. A Category 4 hurricane such as Ida — which brought a triple threat of wind, storm surge and torren
tial rainfall — would have wreaked havoc on the Bayou City.
Unlike New Orleans, which strengthened its levee system after Hurricane Katrina in 2007, Houston hasn’t completed any substantial projects to protect the region against surge from a major hurricane such as Ida. The stakes are high: The Houston area is home to 7.1 million residents, one of the busiest shipping ports in the country and the nation’s largest concentration of critical oil and gas facilities.
“We are sitting ducks right now for a storm,” said Bill Merrell, a Texas A&M University professor who years ago began advocating for an “Ike Dike” coastal barrier system that has yet to get congressional approval.
If Ida had hit Galveston instead of Port Fouchon, La., the hurricane could have caused devastating damage across the Houston region, meteorologists said.
Ida’s 15-foot storm surge would have been smaller than Hurricane Ike’s 22foot storm surge, the worst of which hit Bolivar Peninsula and parts of Chambers County in 2008. The Port of Houston’s facilities, which are built 20 feet above sea level, likely would have survived.
Nevertheless, “the surge from a storm with Ida’s intensity would not bode well for Houston,” said Blake Eskew, a former energy consultant now at the Severe Storm Prediction, Education, and Evacuation from Disasters Center at Rice University. “We would be in trouble.”
The Galveston Seawall, first built after the 1900 hurricane, could have blunted an Ida-like surge, but the bay side of the island would have seen significant flooding, said Lance Wood, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Houston/Galveston office.
Ida’s sustained winds of 150 mph at landfall would have certainly exceeded any storm Houston has experienced in recent years, including Harvey and Ike.
Even parts of south Houston could have experienced Category 3 winds of between 111 mph and 129 mph, which would have damaged homes and other buildings.
These fierce winds have the potential to knock down transmission lines and leave much of the Houston area without power. However, it would have to be a massive hurricane to take out all of the main power connections feeding into Houston, said Joshua Rhodes, a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute. That’s because Harris County has 27 transmission lines serving the region, compared with just eight in New Orleans.
Widespread wind damage, flooding and power outages would be bad enough, but Houston’s large concentration of oil and gas facilities could compound the natural disaster, experts said. Chemical fires, spills and emissions from damaged refineries and storage terminals could pose a threat long after the hurricane passes.
“People need to understand that these big hurricanes like this, even a Category 3, a big Category 3, it’s going to have a very significant impact,” said Jeff Lindner, meteorologist for the Harris County Flood Control District. “It’s going to be challenging.”
Still not ready
Houston has done little so far to mitigate the impact of a potential Ida, experts said.
The region still relies on the 17-foot-high seawall in Galveston. An 18-to-23-foot levee protects petrochemical facilities in Texas City and La Marque.
A proposed barrier system in Galveston Bay, part of the Army Corps of Engineers’ Coastal Texas Study, still needs to be approved, designed and built. The barrier would consist of a gate system that would stretch from the east end of Galveston Island across the mouth of the bay to Bolivar Peninsula. It’s meant to stop storm surge as high as 22 feet from entering the Houston Ship Channel.
“In many respects, Harris County doesn’t think of itself as a coastal county,” Jim Blackburn with Rice’s Baker Institute of Public Policy said. “So much of our rainfall flooding has been the focus. … I just think that we’ve got a very vulnerable back door to Harris County.”
The Corps is expected to submit a feasibility study to Congress by mid-September, which would allow federal authorities to earmark funding for the barrier system. The Corps estimates the cost of the entire project will be more than $26 billion.
Merrell, the Texas A&M professor studying the plan, said the investment would be well worth the protection from a storm like Ida. The Army Corps of Engineers’ flood reduction project in New Orleans, which cost $14.5 billion, appears to have prevented surge flooding during Ida.
“A properly designed Ike Dike would do the same,” Merrell said.
Yet even if all goes according to plan, the barrier project is expected to still take up to 20 years to design and build, leaving the Houston region vulnerable to hurricanes for decades in the interim.
“We are wide open,” Blackburn said. “There is no question.”
Bob Stokes, president of the Galveston Bay Foundation, said hurricane mitigation efforts should go beyond the barrier project. While the Ike Dike could help stop an Ida-like storm surge, the barrier system isn’t designed to withstand winds from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane or prevent major flooding inland from rain. Harris County has undertaken a number of projects since Harvey to increase storage capacity for and conveyance of rainfall; a separate Corps project looking at addressing rainfall is still in the planning phase.
Just as power plants should be ordered to weatherize their equipment for winter freezes, Houston leaders should be urging the oil and gas industry to shore up thousands of chemical storage tanks along the Gulf Coast, which are vulnerable to spills in the event of storm surge and extreme winds. And more homes along the Ship Channel should be bought out or elevated, Stokes said.
“Even if you think the coastal barrier is a great solution, it shouldn’t be the end solution,” Stokes said. “Even if you had all the money in hand, it will take decades to build. We can be doing more in the short term that could make a big difference.”
Oil and gas at risk
Houston’s refinery and petrochemical complex — the nation’s largest — is particularly at risk of long-term catastrophic damage if it takes a direct hit from a major hurricane.
There are eight major refineries and more than 200 chemical plants in the Houston Ship Channel and Galveston Bay, which produce about 13 percent of the nation’s gasoline and a quarter of its jet fuel.
A 2015 Rice University study by Blackburn found that a 24-foot storm surge in the Houston Ship Channel could flood above-ground storage tanks and release 90 million gallons of oil and chemicals, 7 ½ times the amount of oil spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.
A follow-up study published this year by Rice researchers found that chemicals released after a major hurricane could drift in the wind to a height of 5,000 feet for up to 12 hours, spreading across hundreds of miles into Texas.
The oil and gas industry dotting the Gulf Coast is well aware of the risks major hurricanes pose to its operations. The industry trains and plans annually for extreme weather, tweaking emergency plans after every major storm, representatives said.
The East Harris County Manufacturers Association, which represents 114 industry members with about 130 plants in and around the Houston Ship Channel, said its storage tanks are built to sustain hurricane-force winds. Dikes have been dug around tanks to lessen the impacts of flooding and to contain any leaks.
“Manufacturers are not competitors when it comes to safety and environmental protection,” MaryJane Mudd, EHCMA’s executive director said in an email. “After every storm event, lessons are shared and best practices established to improve performance.”
Suzanne Lemieux, the manager of emergency response policy with the trade group American Petroleum Institute, said the oil and gas industry has gotten better every year at protecting facilities and workers against hurricanes. While the nation’s largest oil and gas trade group hasn’t taken a position on the Galveston coastal barrier, it said it encourages more action by political leaders to do what it can to protect Gulf Coast refineries.
“We encourage the Army Corps of Engineers to work with the state, the Ship Channel and users along the Ship Channel to determine what is the best option to protect those operations in that region of Houston that could be affected by significant storm surge,” Lemieux said. “Certainly there have been a lot of studies over many years. So we would encourage more action by the Corps to do what they can with the state and the Ship Channel to improve and protect not just the operations, but the communities that could be impacted by storm surge.”