Posted on 05/20/2016 8:38:47 PM PDT by Lorianne
With clay soil and tabletop-flat terrain, Houston has endured flooding for generations. Its 1,700 miles of man-made channels struggle to dispatch storm runoff to the Gulf of Mexico.
Now the nation's fourth-largest city is being overwhelmed with more frequent and more destructive floods. The latest calamity occurred April 18, killing eight people and causing tens of millions of dollars in damage. The worsening floods aren't simple acts of nature or just costly local concerns. Federal taxpayers get soaked too.
Extreme downpours have doubled in frequency over the past three decades, climatologists say, in part because of global warming. The other main culprit is unrestrained development in the only major U.S. city without zoning rules. That combination means more pavement and deeper floodwaters. Critics blame cozy relations between developers and local leaders for inadequate flood-protection measures.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Houston badly needs a flood abatement plan. The local GOP succeeded at stoping a plan paid for by an unpopular tax but they never succeeded at bringing an alternate plan to the table. It was kicked down the road for someone else to neglect until it’s too late. This annoyed me.
The earth may or may not be warming but flood rains are a reality everyone can agree on. It’s time for some decent runoff plans and some green spaces in the suburban areas to offset the paving of every square inch downtown.
Subsidizing flood insurance.is also a dumb idea. Let the owner — rather than the taxpayer — pay the real costs of insurance. Then we’d see less building, or more flood-resistant building, in vulnerable areas.
The blaming of the floods on global warming is just a theory until it is proven. I doubt those who cite global warming have the scientific background to do a legitimate scientific study. They have no idea what the scientific method is or how to do statistical analysis.
That was an excellent post good sir. However, the solution is quite simple. The group of people that understand statistics to the extreme are the insurance companies. You can get insurance in flood prone areas because of federal programs to insure these areas. "It is done for the good of the people, you understand" or on the other hand perhaps the government does not understand areas that are prone to flooding will flood again and again. If you can not get insurance no lender will give you a loan to build in a flood prone area.
A good example is New Orleans. The French Quarter "Vieux Carre" was built on high ground by the French. They had this odd concept of building on high ground to escape floods and hurricanes. The French Quarter and Tulane and Loyola Avenue did not flood during Hurricane Katrina. The Frenchies may be strange but they "ain't" stupid. If you build in the high areas the insurance companies are happy to insure you for flood damage.
The area from The River (in Louisiana we do not call the Mississippi River by its name, we call it "The River") to Lake Pontchartrain was originally swamp at effectively sea level or slightly above. This area was drained and put behind levees. Then in their great ignorance the city pumped ground water for municipal usage instead of using the river. Those areas then began to subside to below sea level because of pumping the ground water. When the levees on the Industrial Canal broke the area was flooded.
In even greater ignorance the Corp of Engineers built huge levees from Illinois to the mouth of the Mississippi for flood control. (I really hate the Corp of Engineers and I am not a crazy environmentalist.)
The sediments that at one time flooded the marshes below New Orleans and drop sediments and form protective barriers below New Orleans now flow to the mouth of the Mississippi and drop off the continental shelf to the abyssal plain. For this reason the coast of Louisiana loses great amounts of land each year. We are talking about 25 to 30 square miles a year. This equates to about 200 feet a year of coastline. The odd thing is the barrier Islands are stable and represent the coastline on the maps. What the maps do not show is the erosion of the swampland behind the barrier Islands. It is being destroyed at an alarming rate. I well remember as a young man fishing the marshes where the gulf and bays meet. The fishing was damn good. It still is but you are now fishing out in the bay and not where the bay and marsh meet. This is all a result of the Corp of Engineers not allowing the Mississippi to flood the marshes with sediments. As a result the coastal marshes became the sea.
You can put the Mississippi River in a strait jacket with levees for a limited period of time. The River always wins. When The River finally wins and it will, Morgan City, Louisiana will have a new name. It will be called "The New Main Pass West" of the Mississippi River.
I hate and loath what the Corp of Engineers have done to my Mississippi River. Their actions have allowed cities to be built which should have never been. These flood plains are prolific farm land and should have remained farm land. The floods of these farms lands enriched the soil and preserved the marshes and thus protected the coast and New Orleans.
Even worse by building huge levees they in effect have increased the level of the Lower Mississippi. During spring floods the Mississippi is higher than the French Quarter due to the levees. The levees in effect have raised the base level of the river. After the spring flood they drop sediments on the bottom of the river. Thus in effect the base level of the river becomes greater each year. Therefore the Corp of Engineers must dredge and pump sediments the year round. In effect the Corp of Engineers have made the high ground of New Orleans once flood proof, subject to floods.
In 1966 my geology professor lectured on what would happen to New Orleans. He said he did not know when it would happen but said with absolute certainty it would happen. Hurricane Katrina proved him right.
What the Corp of Engineers has done with lakes and rivers not associated with the lower Mississippi River has been great. If you look at Texas their damns and lakes have done great good in taming floods and providing water for farming and cities. They also did good in the Tennessee River System and other river systems in the United States.
However anything the Corp of Engineers has done from Marksville, Louisiana to the Mouth of the Mississippi River has been a total disaster. I fully expect my home of old to be devoured by the Gulf of Mexico, due to their ignorance of sedimentation processes and it has nothing to do with supposedly global warming.
The River always wins and it is patient.
Well, because of the humidity you do save a lot of money on moisture cream and hand lotion. We lived there for twenty years. Had a great small older home with a huge yard, big pool, great neighbors on a quiet side street inside the Loop and close to the Galleria. We loved it. Nine years ago we moved to what was a small town south of there. Now the city and all of its problems are moving out to where we are.
Have to go there twice a week on business now and hate every minute of it. We escape to the Hill Country as often as we can. Lots of wonderful areas in Texas and many great places to explore.
Do enjoy going to Pottsboro area but, unfortunately, we have to drive through Dallas to get there. And then there is Beaumont, which really is the bowel of Texas.
I’m doing a project in Houston right now. I don’t know about their zoning laws, but they absolutely have stormwater restrictions - its the biggest hurdle in the development I’m working on. I have no idea how long these restrictions have been in place, but the article is misleading.
Not fond of Dallas either. I’m a Fort Worth girl :) Never had the “pleasure” of Beaumont. Most I’ve seen of the coastal areas in Texas is a parking lot in Galveston before embarking on a cruise.
In ‘72, my mom rented a house for a week out on the West Beach of Galveston. All eight of us in the family were there and had great weather.
On the way back to the DFW area we stopped about 50 miles North of Houston at the San Jacinto Inn, near the big monument and river. It was a well-known seafood restaurant built up on piers and very large. It looked a little askew and once inside we saw that the floor was buckled about 4-8 inches in places. Waitress explained the large piers were just sinking into the ground due to the water table and that they would soon be closing. ....Hated to see it go, because it was some of the finest seafood I’ve ever eaten.
We bought flood insurance on the 19th since the water got up to my driveway. It kicked in today.
They absorbed a lot of people from Louisiana after Katrina,
Rick Perry opened the doors to the Katrina folks. I said at the time “They’ll never leave.”
Very good and informative posting! You have a good ‘about’ page, also.
I could be wrong, but I seem to recall folks lowering buckets on ropes from the 2nd floor of their homes in the French Quarter to get water for toilet flushing. Most of the homes I saw in the 9th Ward were only single story. Also, weren’t many cemeteries by the FQ flooded, causing caskets to be floating?
Not trying to argue with you, but just trying to understand what I saw on the TV news coverage.
Now you tell me that the Houston has laid thousands of acres of concrete and asphalt in the last 30 years. Next you'll be telling me all that concrete creates excess runoff.
The average person who ascribes to “global warming” has no idea that they are dupes used to help reduce the standard of living in the West to that of the rest of the world.
Believe it was the Houston Mayor, Bill White?, who opened Houston’s doors. And you’re right - they never left. Some of the people they interviewed in Greenspoint at the time of our recent flood said they were evacuating for the second time because of flooding, the first being because of Katrina. Many still living in public housing and complaining because nobody was helping them. Understand most had no insurance of any kind.
Sheila Jackson Lee was front and center on TV but at least we didn’t have so much of the drama from FOX this time.
Just don’t buy a used car from Houston.
That’s true, what was I thinking?
Love Fort Worth. Worked there in the summer of 1984. Went to Gilley’s a lot. We go to the beach in Galveston frequently but it has changed a lot, and not necessarily for the better IMO, since Ike hit. Bandera, Dripping Springs, Fredricksburg are our favorite go to places.
Climate Change????? HELL NO!
It doesn’t take a genius to understand why Houston is flooding now, but not back then.
The reason that it is flooding is for the simple fact that the amount of acreage that used to lay bare, soaking up rainwater is now covered in concrete roads, housing and apartment foundations, and are also covered in paving for all of the roads and streets that have been built.
It’s impossible for the land to soak the water up so it does what it does.....heads to the lowest level. City planners in Houston never looked at planning for handling runoff in an intelligent manner and now they pay the price.
I participated in a major manor in the construction of one of the hi rise condo structures on the barrier island (singer Island) at Ree vera beach. I actually made an impromptu inspection of the various structural aspects of the building that is literally on the beach. It is supported on a pile foundation but has below grade parking structures.
I can visualize a cat 5 storm that will erode the dunes and the surrounding sand and the building will literally topple into the ocean.
Yep.
But it’s easy to blame “climate change”.
This is a man made problem, but it’s not climate change.
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