In due time, Harvey’s floods will be gone, but something
like them will appear elsewhere.
Climatologists predicted a catastrophe of Harvey’s proportions would
strike somewhere in the country. And it did.
Other commentators point out that Houston’s run-away development made
everything worse. Houston is a city
known for its dismissal of zoning regulations, and it sprawls wherever concrete
can be laid down. A stream of news
informs us that bad public policy has worsened flooding. The message: don’t try to alter the path of Mother
Nature, and, when she takes a wrong turn, get out of the way.
All well and good, but we should face realities. Americans have always preferred to live near
water. No matter the wisdom of the
counsel against it, many will continue to build on seacoasts and on lakes and
rivers. Take a look at New Jersey’s
Shore. Soon after Superstorm Sandy
devastated the coastline, people rebuilt along a tiny strip of land between Barnegat
Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. In some places, the width of that strip is little
more than the size of a football field. Not
only is the convergence of the bay and the ocean on this strip easily imaginable,
it is frighteningly visible. Yet, many
of us have an incurable yearning to be surrounded by water. Some property holders even object to
protective dunes, lest their views of the sea be diminished.
Everyone knows about the risks, but flood prone sites
continue to rise in value. Houses on the strip that once sold for a few hundred
thousand dollars are now being replaced by $3 million mansions, built right up
to the setbacks. The Jersey Shore is
hardly alone. Miami has much the same
experience. Builders continue to develop
on flood prone areas and command the highest prices. Important interests are tied up in waterfront
values. Realtors, developers, trade
unions, mortgage bankers and local businesses have a big stake in coastal
development. Short of a massive, continual
sequence of catastrophes, we stand little chance of shifting those stake
holders into safe locations.
What then can we do about building in the path of
great floods? We may not be able to
prevent flooding but we can blunt its effects.
We can make way for rivers and lakes by building canals to absorb the
overflows and widen surrounding pathways so that waters have somewhere else to
go. The Dutch have had some success in “making
room for the river.” For centuries, they
relied on hard engineering for protection and built higher dikes. Then they
realized they could build just so high.
Instead of keeping the water out, they decided to let the water in. In literally deciding to go with the flow, the
Dutch created an ancillary channel, allowing the river to flow onto a
designated floodplain. Most waterfront
locales in the United States will not be amenable to this remedy, but some will
and we should allow for river and lake expansion.
The next option we have is to incorporate flood
mitigation into a national infrastructure policy. Protection against natural hazards can be
joined to maintaining our physical infrastructure. While the engineering
sciences know how to repair bridges and tunnels it also has made great progress
in mitigating the impact of floods. Grey infrastructure––pump stations,
floodgates, bulkheads, drainage and structural elevations––can be joined to
green infrastructure––dunes, berms, bio swales, porous surfaces and green roofs. The combination of grey-green infrastructure
offers us immense possibilities. No doubt, an undertaking of these proportions require
substantial funding, planning and coordination, but the benefits have now come
to outweigh the costs.
Another option is delicately political, but
doable. Insurance markets can be effective
in flood mitigation, but we must charge risk takers for their willingness to
take risks. Subsidizing bad behavior
only encourages more bad behavior—what has come to be known as “moral hazard”
should be ended. The National Flood Insurance
Program already had a deficit of $24.6 billion before Harvey. That alone, could
produce a coalition of conservative fiscal hawks and liberal egalitarians to
curb subsidies for the affluent.
All seven of the billion-dollar plus
storms have occurred in the last 17 years[AG1] ,
and we have finally come to recognize megastorms as an endemic crisis. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s advice to
“never let a serious crisis go to waste” tells us we may be able to do things
now that we could not do otherwise. It’s
time.
[AG1]Before
Harvey there had already been 6 flooding disasters since 2016 with losses
exceeding $1 billion across the United States. See:
ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/events/US/1980-2017
No comments:
Post a Comment