Dems ask Trump to reinstate Obama flood standard after Harvey

A trio of Senate Democrats is asking President Trump to reinstate the flood standard for infrastructure that he rolled back just a few weeks ago.

Democratic Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.), Brian Schatz (Hawaii) and Chris Van Hollen (Md.) say Hurricane Harvey shows how important it is for federal policies to incentivize building in a way that accounts for sea-level rise and extreme flooding.

“This common-sense, flexible approach provided agencies with many different options for complying with the new standard, including taking into account available climate science or building to withstand a 500-year storm — the same kind of destructive event that the residents of eastern Texas just endured,” they wrote to Trump on Tuesday.

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“Please take action at the executive level to ensure that the billions of taxpayer dollars are not wasted on building infrastructure that is vulnerable to destruction and that threatens American lives.”

Trump has been under fire by Democrats and some others in the wake of Harvey for undoing the climate change policy instituted by the Obama administration.

Under that policy, Obama directed federal agencies to develop policies to ensure that infrastructure and other federally funded projects could withstand extreme weather events.

It was pitched at the time both as a climate adaptation measure and an effort to protect federal taxpayer money, by avoiding the cost of building projects that would have to be rebuilt.

The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration is planning to write a new flood standard policy, spurred at least in part by Harvey.