Yea but how do you displace Houston? I lived there for a year. They are used to flooding and handle it pretty well actually. But it’s a port city and you need it. Kinda hard to just relocate somewhere else. Honestly don’t know how you deal w/ it other than rebuild. It’s not like rebuilding on a barrier island after a hurricane. It’s 50 miles inland.
Houston is already inland though. And this is flooding from rain, not surge.
We’re gonna see more and more of it, out of necessity with sea level rise unfortunately. But we’ve been stupidly paying people to rebuild in flood plains over and over since flood insurance became a thing and well before climate change was a serious problem. It’s insanity. Never a peep about muh tax dollars. But hey! Those people VOTE!
True. They’re still on super flat land that’s barely above sea level, so let’s say “move shit inland and/or to higher elevations”
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Correct. Or at the very least, “Yeah your house basically sits in a rice paddy, so you can keep doing you but we’re not providing you with taxpayer funded flood insurance unless you move somewhere less stupid.”
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New Orleans is one case that is truly baffling–I can’t imagine why anyone would invest in a permanent structure there, knowing that it is a near-lock to be flooded and/or destroyed in the next few decades. Levees can only do so much; eventually, hundreds of thousands of people are going to have to move.
The sad reality is the people that will have to move will be primarily brown people. Our country is already showing how it treats brown refugees from other countries; I don’t expect brown refugees from our own country to be treated any differently. We’ll have a climate refugee crisis within our own country and will surely not handle it well.
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If you did a financial analysis and determined that the value of Houston being sited where it is turned out to make it worth rebuilding what’s necessary after flooding, would it be a shock? It’s the second busiest cargo port in the US. (by cargo tonnage)
I’d be a bit surprised if a financial analysis that incorporated the probability of future floods and rebuilding efforts pointed to rebuilding, but not totally shocked. I think if we separated critical port-related infrastructure from other rebuilding efforts (namely, homes) we might see a divergence–it’s probably worth it to maintain port infrastructure, but let some of the neighborhoods turn back into swampland.
1st busiest port in North America. (by cargo tonnage)
Yea the Houston area is just too strategically important to abandon the area. Maybe have new structures built elevated like you see on barrier islands?
Agree–I’m not advocating full abandonment. I’m just agreeing with Namath–for Houston in this discussion but moreso for all coastal or flood-prone cities–that we need to admit defeat at the hands of sea-level rise and increased flooding and let mother nature reclaim some of her land. In Houston’s case, that would start with not rebuilding the various neighborhoods that sit within the flood basins every time it floods.
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Bobman should get in on this, but Houston is very sprawling as I understand it. They should probably build higher density on any higher ground - if they have any.
As an aside, some of the earliest human settlements were built in wetlands (Mesopotamia was much wetter 10000 years ago) and areas that flooded often and they built on little spots of higher elevation referred to as “turtlebacks”.
Yea Houston is 650 square miles. NYC is 300 square miles and has 2.5x the population. It’s spread out and no real mass transit other than some buses. It takes an hour to drive from one side to the other.
Should be illegal to build in estuaries and wetlands.
This is exactly what I spend most of my time on at my company.
It’s just not possible to never build in wetlands. They are literally everywhere. Never building in wetlands would essentially be never building.
Thankfully we are actually getting better at incorporating wetlands into storm water infrastructure and other urban development.
Most places have laws which mandate some version no net lose. This means developers pay to reconstruct wetlands of equivalent size and type to those infilled during development.
If I’m not mistaken, urban/suburban sprawl exacerbates flooding as well as undeveloped wetlands, estuaries, open land and such does things like block storm surges and absorb or slow flood waters.
Spoiler: Houston has no zoning laws
The wetland map of where i live shows there are places to build here. It would be harder but it could be done.
They do for sure. Flood abatement is a critical function of wetlands.
Wetlands maps are at best approximations. They are made by mapping large obvious wetlands from aerial photography. Most wetlands are not what you envision when you think wetland and they cannot be seen on aerial imagery… Only a small number of wetlands are large bodies of water with cattails around the outside and ducks swimming in them. The vast majority are what are called ephemeral or temporary wetlands. They only hold water a few weeks a year during spring runoff. The rest of the year they look like nothing to the average person. However, as micro noted above they are critical for things like flood mitigation, wildlife habitat, and ground water recharge.
Of course, not everywhere is wetland but much more area than the average person thinks is.