dohboi wrote:Thanks for all the data and insights. I would point out again, though, that we tend to see the latest record or extreme event as 'as bad as it can get' and if we've survived it, presumably everything will go swimmingly (so to speak) in the future.
I described the process dohboi. It is completely unnecessary for our process to think "this is as bad as it gets", or "this is political label X139".
The guy that says how much water, uses current models and current data, to tell the engineer how much water he needs to catch. They ask each, and every time they build anything bigger than a tin bbq shack. Its not optional. You can't get the permit to build anything without the plans accounting for water. And as its an iterative process, each step, day by day, accounts for not only what the current model suggests, but intrinsically accounts for the small difference between yesterdays underestimate and todays current science.
Its beautiful. And it works.
You don't accommodate SLR, storm surge and subsidence with one massive, high profile effort. You do it with tens of thousands of tiny efforts, day after day after day, never ending.
But of course the extremes are going to get ever more extreme.
Indeed, and that is what the CAT 5 model is for. Current science, up to date, with current GIS data.
Together with climate models, It tells you what the maximum is today, you build to manage that maximum, and tomorrow, you build to manage tomorrows maximum, and the day after that, you build to manage that days maximum. There is no end.
It is billions and billions of dollars, spent year, after year after year, and will continue so until the end of industrial civilization.
We take water and flooding VERY seriously here. No room for politics. Solid science. Solid engineering. No blame; no victims, no whining, just concrete and backhoes.... lots and lots of backhoes.
I have been wondering, though, along the lines that ROCK mentioned above--how fast will the oil and gas extraction and refining business implode, and will that be the 'wave' that really 'inundates' Houston. Certainly, so far, more American cities have been destroys by economic shifts (aka outsourcing and tech changes) than by GW-related disasters. The latter will fast be catching up with the former, imvho, though.
Houston has a quite diversified economy at present. As one ebbs, another will rise. The port, rail connections, and location are simply to good at any designated point of MSL.
For instance, this area used to produce an astounding amount of rice, but it became uneconomical, and more profitable activities were pursued. As climate change nukes the grain productivity in the tropics, our subtropical zone should have a good stretch of years where we can make good money growing rice again. Further inland, there's huge swaths of farmland that are casually used or ignored because they aren't economic to produce at current prices with the huge excess in corn. Once the excess is not so excess, prices will rise, and those can be returned to production. So, if there were a shift, I'd expect ag processing and exports via shipping to increase in Houston as this century's changes propagate.
For an overview, not Houston related really.
Climate Change and Global Food Security: (David Battisti)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06ZkcOqT76MWith 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.
Struggle, and succeed.
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.
Woot! Victory. I told you what the numbers were for success and failure. "tens of millions" on a flood event, is victory. That's what it looks like to properly manage a flood. Fifty billion or higher is the price of failure. And most of the eight who died, won Darwin awards for driving into standing water. You can't stop people from killing themselves when they want to. Sorry, but that's the way it is.
An Associated Press analysis of government data found that if Harris County, which includes Houston, were a state it would rank in the top five or six in every category of repeat federal flood losses — defined as any property with two or more losses in a 10-year period amounting to at least $1,000 each.
Indeed, and this is something that is a work in progress. The idea answer, is that on the 2nd or 3rd flood loss, you set the annual insurance premium to the full value of the property; the owner will then self-insure, and will be unable to find a regular, mortgage assisted, type buyer. Next flood comes along, make a reasonable buyout offer, and property moves to county or federal ownership as appropriate for the location.
Texans however, for the most part, when denied insurance, don't abandon the property, they simply revert to self-repair, and stay put. Takes quite a disaster to get any significant number of them to accept the buyout.
Since 1998, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has paid more than $3 billion in today's dollars for flood losses in metropolitan Houston.
While repeat federal flood relief payouts average about $3,000 per square mile nationally, they are nearly half a million dollars per square mile in metro Houston. Six of Texas' eight federally declared disasters since December 2013 included floods.
Bad Federal policy is not Houston's problem or fault. FEMA acts as an enabler of above bad behavior, they get what you would expect. I've always recommended that FEMA never offer assistance like this, but rather, offer a choice between a low interest loan (for low amounts, say 10k or less), or a buyout offer. No Texan can resist free money; but give them the above choice and they WILL make rational decisions.
This would increase their short term layouts, but would also improve long term adaptive response to increases in flood events.
Since the 1980s, Houston's preferred approach to flood control, besides improving drainage, has been to build thousands of detention ponds, concrete-lined pools that capture stormwater and pipe it out slowly.
This is incorrect, most detention ponds are not concrete lined. Some are of course, but most are not. And in the last decade the pace and size of the effort has increased amazingly.
But developers don't build enough floodwater retention into their projects, and "areas that never flooded before now flood in the smallest event," said Ed Browne, chairmen of the citizens' group Residents Against Flooding .
Citizens groups often get confused about current efforts and "developers". Many subdivisions built in the 70s and 80s have almost no flood control. And its these communities that are getting beat up bad. And they deserve and need to be beat up bad so they'll MOVE. Residents however, would prefer the county stop their county wide effort, and build hugely expensive, retrofit flood control. County is mostly uninterested; so they get mad; but they won't get much money spent to keep their home that deserves to be flooded from flooding.
For example, if a property previously had construction and is being redeveloped, building codes don't require detention ponds...
Quite true. And rational. Once the site is doing something, its prohibitively expensive to add retention ponds, in most cases.
You still aren't going to get the county to spend billions to save one old neighborhood. Sorry, they get to move. And they should only get one flood insurance payout. When the house goes underwater, you get a buyout check. Not a repair check. Once you take the check, county bulldozes the house and call it a nature preserve... tada, fixed.
So, yeah, Houston may 'stay afloat' by continuing to leach of the Federal Gov (all the time complaining about the same government) to the tune of $3 billion, and doubtless much, much more going forward.
1. chump change.
2. bad federal policy that enables bad behavior is the fault of the federal government. STOP WRITING REPAIR CHECKS. ITS BAD. YOU DON'T GET TO BLAME HOUSTON FOR THE BAD POLICY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
But those federal funds will have more and more claimants to them as more and more areas get threatened and devastated by ever-rising seas and ever-more-intense-and-damaging storms.
I hope they get cut off completely. They are a NEGATIVE effect. They cause harm. Cause residential flooding. Cause deaths. They need to stop. NOW.
Buyout checks or small loans ONLY. Free money is corrosive and lethal.
(and yeah, subsidence on the Gulf Coast is, and always will be, much faster than the change in MSL)