OPINION | Harvey shows Houston’s flood-prevention shortfalls

The Houston-Galveston region has been devastated by an unprecedented hurricane and tropical storm. The rainfall amounts at the time of writing (three days in) have generally exceeded 35 inches with more predicted.

Here are some policy observations and recommendations: 

1. Engineering alone will not solve a problem of this scale. Every flood damage-reduction strategy that is available should be used, including a full range of non-structural alternatives. The economic future of Houston and every coastal city hangs on the country objectively studying new rainfall trends and finding creative and innovative solutions.

2. Our federal structures are in need of major maintenance. The Addicks and Barker reservoirs have been known to be dangerous for some time according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and cannot be used to their full capacity, leading to releases having to be made that compound existing flood problems downstream, even as design capacity may go unused. Existing sediment build-up needs to be removed.

3. Strategies to pay landowners to keep prairies and non-jurisdictional wetlands natural and not developed as subdivisions are essential, both surrounding Houston and along the coast. Congress might consider a program of yearly payments to farmers to grow native prairies that have an incredible ability to absorb water in the soil and hold it. We sure could use more of that in this event.

4. Our FEMA floodplains are too small for the size of rainfall that we have been experiencing recently. We have had several 500-plus-year events in the last two to three years. FEMA needs to take the lead in investigating our changing climate and how it is affecting our statistical practices and metrics. Further, we as a community have avoided taking an objective view of this due to the land use implications of new maps. That attitude has to change.

5. We have recurrent flooding areas that need to be bought out. FEMA should reconsider its policy with respect to buyouts, including whether or not recurrent flood damages must have been in the 100-year floodplain to qualify for buyout, given that our floodplains may not be truly accurate and that much of Houston’s flooding occurs outside of mapped floodplains due to the use of streets as secondary drainage systems, something that is not included in mapped floodplains as I understand the process.  

6. There are solutions to surge flooding that is a major coastal problem associated with hurricanes, one that has largely been absent from Hurricane Harvey but could represent an even worse flood damage disaster in the Houston area due to the vulnerability of the region’s chemical and refining complex. A 20- to 25-foot surge event in Galveston Bay would inundate the adjacent industries, likely causing the worst environmental disaster in United States history and crippling the region’s — and the country’s — fuel supply and plastics. 

7. There are climate-related impacts and issues that we must evaluate objectively. The future of coastal development depends upon it. Hurricane Harvey developed in about two days from a tropical cyclone to a Category 4 hurricane. This development was fueled by the heat of the Gulf of Mexico, which I have been told is either the hottest or among the hottest bodies of water in the world.

   {mosads}This portends more fast-developing hurricanes, as well as more fuel for storms moving across this area. We have to understand the impact of this heating on these big storms. The fate of coastal development is dependent upon it.

   

We must get these issues out and heard. Nothing less than the economic future of Houston is at stake. 

Jim Blackburn is a professor in the practice of environmental law at Rice University. He is a faculty scholar at Rice’s Baker Institute and co-director of the university’s Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters (SSPEED) Center.

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