Flood foolishness
As Hurricane Harvey looms, White House repeals common-sense regulations.
We all know by now that the trusty hurricane kit should have enough food and water for three days, flashlights and extra batteries, bandages, snake bite kits, and maybe a few packs of Skittles. For homeowners in Meyerland, there’s another box to check: a bottle of Xanax. You can bet that in southwest Houston eyes are twitching and hands shaking at the thought of enduring, yet again, another devastating flood.
Nobody could blame those residents for feeling anxious as the south wind picks up and the sky darkens this morning. Not with Hurricane Harvey hovering ever nearer to the Texas coast and threatening to bring 15-20 inches of rain. This neighborhood on the banks of Brays Bayou has experienced flooding again and again, and some homes are still under restoration from the May 2016 floods.
They’re not alone. Every quarter of the metropolitan area has literally been up to its ankles in floodwaters at one time or another. (We pause a few seconds to remind you to “turn around, don’t drown” when you see high-water barricades). Longtime residents remember the downpours of Hurricanes Alicia which let loose over 10 inches of rain in 1983 or Ike in 2008 with its foot of rain. In 2001, the slow-moving Tropical Storm Allison dumped 30 inches over our city. Newcomers broke in their rain boots during the Memorial Day floods, which dropped over 12 inches in 2015, and the Tax Day floods that produced as much as 17 inches last year.
These devastating deluges provide gallons of reasons why all Houstonians should be outraged by what’s going on in Washington, D.C., where one obstreperous person remains unfazed, some would say stubbornly ignorant about the threat of rising flood waters: President Donald Trump.
Last week, the White House repealed a sensible rule to prevent damage from dangerous weather. The regulation, written after Hurricane Sandy, was simple. If a school, a hospital, a water treatment plant or any project in a flood zone was going to receive federal funding, it had to be built with a higher margin of safety against flooding. The private sector can take risks, but projects funded with taxpayer dollars deserve greater scrutiny.
So why repeal this commonsense rule? The answer might be as petty as spite.
“There appears to be little rationale for repealing the flood protection rule other than it had been enacted by President Obama,” New York Times columnist Jim Dwyer wrote last week.
But it rains on Democrats and Republicans alike. And as any Houstonian can testify, building in a flood prone area without considering the risk of a flood and how to mitigate it can end up being expensive or even deadly. Inland flooding is the leading cause of loss of life during tropical storms and hurricanes.
When disaster strikes, it’s the taxpayer who ends up paying for rescue efforts, and repairing and rebuilding flooded infrastructure. Since 1980, more than $260 billion in public dollars has been spent on flood-related damage, according to Laura Lightbody director of The Pew Charitable Trust’s flood-prepared communities project.
Spending federal dollars on college campuses, military bases, bridges, airports and other projects without taking flooding into account is like playing a game of chicken with Mother Nature. Over the years, Houstonians have learned the effects of flooding firsthand, and we’ve had the misfortune to amass tens of thousands of stories. They’re stories of filthy flood waters invading beloved homes not once but twice and three times, of getting stuck in cars for hours with crying children in the back seat. And too often they’re stories that end in the death of a loved one.
By necessity, Houstonians have been forced to become experts in the destructive effects of rising floodwaters. That’s why we should all contact our Congressional representatives, and make sure they understand the toll that flooding has taken our lives. We need to ask them to reverse this short-sighted repeal of a common sense standard.
America can trust Houstonians on this one. If any community has banked experience on the dangers of floods, it’s ours. When nature throws its worst at us, and heavy rains come, taxpayers should want every advantage on our side. That includes flood-savvy infrastructure.