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The U.S. Flooded One of Houston’s Richest Neighborhoods to Save Everyone Else

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Re: The U.S. Flooded One of Houston’s Richest Neighborhoods to Save Everyone Else

#121

Post by Filligree »

kodablah wrote: post #90
Filligree wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what flood insurance is for. In a socialist democracy you'd be right, but in case of the USA, it seems more appropriate to require that homeowners get insurance.

I think in this case, you would actually require federal-government-decision insurance. The downstream residents very well might not have flooded had the federal government done nothing (of course we can agree that what they did was probably best). We should not pretend that another entity directly causing this shouldn't be held responsible, even if it was the right decision.

They might have, sure, but the plan for doing so was in place before the houses were built. They can't claim to be surprised about this.

Re: The U.S. Flooded One of Houston’s Richest Neighborhoods to Save Everyone Else

#122

Post by rurban »

I don't understand what's there to litigate. If they wouldn't have done the controlled release, the dams would have broken, and the very same homes wouldn't not only have been flooded even more, most of them would have been gone. Nada. Plus 10x more homes. Plus broken dams, without protection for the next storm.

When there is a storm in Houston, streets do flood for 30 minutes and traffic has to wait. Without the canals and the dams the city would stand still much longer, the damage would be intolerable.

Government did the right thing, but they should have warned them more timely. At 10pm, not 1am. With some acoustic alarm.

Re: The U.S. Flooded One of Houston’s Richest Neighborhoods to Save Everyone Else

#123

Post by rurban »

jcranberry wrote: post #71
Spooky23 wrote: post #14

My first house had flooding problems every spring and heavy rain. Lesson learned: live on a hill.

Good luck finding one of those in Houston!

There are some junk hills, filled with toxic waste. You wouldn't even try to snowboard these, lest build a home there.

The good thing about Houston is that everyone is there in together, the rich and the super rich.

Re: The U.S. Flooded One of Houston’s Richest Neighborhoods to Save Everyone Else

#124

Post by pabl0rg »

ocschwar wrote: post #112
ynniv wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flood zones are meticulously mapped, and owning a property in them usually requires Federally mandated flood insurance. [ http://www.harriscountyfemt.org/ ]

The insurance mandate is what's kept those flood zone maps from being updated, so it's not as meticulous as you might think. And it's not so much the insurance as you having to build for the flood when you ask for a building permit.

Also, those neighborhoods are/were among the most expensive in Houston. Being reclassified as a flood zone would change that (it's one of the standard things a Houstonian looks at when buying land).

Re: The U.S. Flooded One of Houston’s Richest Neighborhoods to Save Everyone Else

#125

Post by pyre »

dgritsko wrote: post #89
philjohn wrote: post #19

Zeeland (and other parts of the Netherlands) now have a similar strategy in place - they've spent billions over the years on sea defences, which are absolutely stunning to behold, but have now done the sums and realised they've entered diminishing returns. It's cheaper to let certain areas flood and compensate than it is to build ever more expensive defences.

There was an interesting story a few months back about how the city of Nashville has a process where they buy homes in flood-prone areas at a "fair market price", then demolish the homes and convert the property to "green space" (preventing new buildings from being constructed). The main idea was that this is cheaper in the long run than the continuing cost of disaster recovery, emergency services, etc. for people in…

I have a feeling that at _some_ point, a politician is going to see all of this land that the city owns and get dollar signs in their eyes, and it will eventually be privately-owned and built-up again.

Re: The U.S. Flooded One of Houston’s Richest Neighborhoods to Save Everyone Else

#126

Post by pyre »

junkcollector wrote: post #116
jcranberry wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck finding one of those in Houston!

When a proper developer builds a home or sub-division in Houston, they bring in fill dirt and do compactions until the houses rest on small hills. You get frequent flooding (about once a year) but it rarely reaches the house before the flood prevention systems have a chance to divert and control it. The problem here is two-fold, as discussed in the article, these people built there homes INSIDE the flood diversion sy…

As others were saying, the developers actively wanted to exclude disclosure the flood status of these plots to potential buyers. Eventually the city "compromised" with them to hide a one-sentence warning deep in the paperwork.

Now granted, this did not prevent the homeowners from doing their own due-diligence, but I really think that the city officials that agreed to this, and the developers that lobbied for it should all be taken to task for their actions (and I think this regardless of what happened during the hurricane).

Re: The U.S. Flooded One of Houston’s Richest Neighborhoods to Save Everyone Else

#127

Post by ggchappell »

losvedir wrote: post #12

Something like this happened a few years ago where I live.[0] Basically, the Army blew the levee to save a town, Cairo, IL, at the expense of (a few) homes and (lots of) farmland on the MO side. Maciej (HN user idlewords) mentioned it in one of his interesting blog posts[1]. The blog post asserts: > The farmers downriver got their fields fertilized with rich river silt and are wealthier and more resentful than ever.…

> Basically, the Army blew the levee to save a town, Cairo, IL, at the expense of (a few) homes and (lots of) farmland on the MO side.

Are you sure about the "homes" part?

20 years ago, I was a professor at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau. As part of new faculty orientation, we took a bus tour of the area. During the trip, we passed through the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway. We were told that no one was allowed to live there, so that it could be flooded on short notice without endangering people or their homes.

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