
Houston floods show risks of ignoring science and letting developers run rampant - kafkaesq
https://qz.com/1064364/hurricane-harvey-houstons-flooding-made-worse-by-unchecked-urban-development-and-wetland-destruction/
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cmac2992
The whole thing gets crazy when you realize the federal government was
basically subsidizing development in these high risk flood areas. The federal
flood insurance rates were not properly evaluating the risk to insure these
areas. They were using older flood maps which don't account for changes in
urban sprawl and global warming

[https://www.vox.com/2017/8/26/16208230/hurricane-harvey-
floo...](https://www.vox.com/2017/8/26/16208230/hurricane-harvey-flood-damage)

~~~
ryanmarsh
You may be correct about the subsidies. I don't know enough about it. What I
do know is a 1-3% increase in insurance premiums wouldn't have changed the
behavior of home buyers here. All along I thought my house was in a 100 year
flood plain (plane?). This week I found out it's not even in a 500 year flood
plain.

~~~
cmac2992
I'm certainly no expert

My back of napkin math says they are $48k short per household.

But ya, Harvey would have been devastating regardless of past insurance policy
pricing.

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ryanmarsh
Yes pouring concrete damn near anywhere along the gulf coast is destroying a
wetland area. You caught us red handed. Guess how much difference it would
have made if the Houston area didn't have a single cubic yard of concrete. We
got a fuck ton of rain. Who the fuck are these people?

Developers "run rampant"? Really let's have an in depth look at how our
understanding of storm water dentition and runoff has evolved over the past 50
years of explosive growth here. Let's analyze building codes and how they've
evolved here. Nah, let's just use this as a stick to beat our pet issue with.

We've had three 500 floods in 12 years.

Seriously. Fuck off. Everybody wants to project their pet issue onto us. These
people don't care what's actually going on here, what our actually challenges
are and what we've been trying to do about it for the past 50 fucking years.

~~~
surgeryres
"These people" cannot comprehend what 3 feet of rain does to a city, because
nothing like this has happened in recent history.

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nonbel
I was told in the Netherlands they have large areas designated to be flooded
in case of any emergency. People still live there, but know that they are in
the flood zone. I can't find a map of this at the moment though.

~~~
surgeryres
Great idea!

I would like to see what happens to their dyke system when 3 trillion gallons
of water pours in. Don't think it would end well.

~~~
grzm
I think you mean dike. You may still be able to edit it.

~~~
surgeryres
Probably

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chiph
Using this storm as an opportunity to promote your pet belief is in amazingly
bad taste.

The least the author could have done is waited until all the bodies were
identified.

~~~
51Cards
I tend to disagree. This is the moment in which people are most likely to read
and perhaps even listen. It's amazing how fast people want to and will forget
about it if they weren't directly impacted. This is when it is most relevant.

~~~
kthejoker2
Except these aren't particularly valid issues. Even with a pristine Katy
prairie Harvey would still have caused total mayhem. 800 year floods are an
insurance problem not a zoning problem.

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throwaway2016a
I'm not sure why this was flagged specifically but changing the title to say
"Real Estate Developers" might help.

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surgeryres
Should we restrict human expansion and destruction of coastal wetlands? Is it
smart to live in a place where flooding is the norm, and it's costs must
continually be subsidized by local, state and federal government? Is it fair
to spend federal dollars necessary to rebuild Houston?

These are interesting questions - but the fact is that 20-50 inches of rain
fell along the Texas coast the past 4 days. No amount of eco circle jerk or
voting is ever going to prevent a disaster like this. Even the article says
the amount of water shed run off affected by expansion is a drop in the bucket
compared to the total amount of rainfall Harvey will produce. This did not
just affect Houston either - but multiple counties along the Texas coast all
the way to Louisiana.

Should we not rebuild San Francisco when the next big earthquake hits? Should
we not rebuild New Jersey or New Orleans when they get hit by another
hurricane? Where do we draw the line on rebuilding large cities after natural
disasters?

I don't have good answers here - we are all still trying to recover in Houston
at this point. Like Angersock said, the sooner we recover the better for
people like QAPereo. We are pioneers in Houston - space, heart surgery, oil
and gas to name a few - why not rebuild?

~~~
skybrian
None of that. It just means being smart about city planning like the
Netherlands.

~~~
surgeryres
Hurricanes don't affect the Netherlands. No amount of planning can prevent
devastation from a storm that drops three feet of water in your front yard.

You seem uniformed about what is going on here. This hurricane was bigger than
Rita, Katrina, Sandy - and those were real beasts. Maybe you are uninformed
because national news coverage of this storm is limited compared to others
like it - there have been few deaths because as Texans we have done a damn
good job dealing with it so far.

~~~
skybrian
It's not all or nothing, it's a continuum. Decisions about city planning can
make things better or worse. There were things done wrong that made it worse.

For example, building homes in a reservoir [1] seems like an obvious bad idea.
Do you really want to defend that?

[1]
[https://plus.google.com/+BrianSlesinsky/posts/GwxF2yM3QmC](https://plus.google.com/+BrianSlesinsky/posts/GwxF2yM3QmC)

~~~
surgeryres
It is a continuum, and we are way to the right on a log scale in terms of
event intensity.

I agree we can do certain things like require people to have flood insurance.

Neat reference, but you are misquoting it. The homes are not built in a
resevoir. They are built in a 100 year flood plain artificially created by
earthen dams designed to protect the city.

~~~
skybrian
Isn't that what a reservoir is? You build a dam and everything behind it
floods. (Typically anyone living there already gets bought out.)

Apparently not all the land behind the dam was bought when it was vacant,
people built houses there, therefore these reservoirs can't be allowed to fill
all the way during the storm, and they have to release water sooner than they
would have otherwise.

(Or at least that's what ProPublica seems to be saying. Other news reports say
differently.)

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mifreewil
Yes let's blame the floods on lack of zoning regulations. Not a hurricane.
Houston is too affordable, needs to be gentrified and regulated so no one can
afford to live there like San Francisco.

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cmurf
If our species were slightly better than a self-important ape that wears
pants, we'd:

    
    
        a. give everyone with property damage ~$20,000
        b. void their mortgage or lease
    

So now they can afford to relocate, or they have some money to start
rebuilding, they have no debt and the banks who decided to not require flood
insurance can go choke on their bad decision and risk assessment.

That's cheaper than the inevitable $120+ billion dollar bailout that's on the
way. And it would help people make the saner choice which is to migrate out of
Houston which gets flooded in some way or another pretty much every year, even
with wet lands in place.

And maybe the no longer bailed out banks will require, across the board, flood
insurance. Which should match the actual risk of future floods.

~~~
kthejoker2
As a resident Houston for 25 years, I can count on one hand the number of
times flooding has caused anything but minor inconveniences to the city as a
whole. There will always be a slightly inflated risk pool here but it's not
nearly as bad as you make it sound.

And I will gladly go on record as willing to subsidize 800 year floods in any
part of the world, the inevitable Big One in California, the next Mt St
Helens, and so on. Expecting the market to manage black swans is unrealistic.

~~~
cmurf
Harris County Flood Control District claims three 500 year floods the past
three years. That this is by far the worst of the three, doesn't make 500 year
floods in Houston "black swan" events. Their own web site makes it sound worse
than I am. [https://www.hcfcd.org/flooding-floodplains/harris-countys-
fl...](https://www.hcfcd.org/flooding-floodplains/harris-countys-flooding-
history/)

~~~
kthejoker2
Those aren't "claims", those are based on the historical record of the
floodplain here. And those floods are a reflection of huge weather events not
poor planning on the city's part.

And that site is only talking about the typical spot flooding that Houston is
prone to which causes (again) a slightly inflated risk pool.

You're way overstating your case here.

~~~
kthejoker2
And yes, 3 500 year floods in 3 years qualifies as a black swan. There are
simply no models that predicted this.

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QAPereo
It shows not only the dangers of ignoring science but of promoting an
irrational alternative in its stead. Like a war, a hurricane is something you
cannot pretend is not happening; it's a true test of your reality versus
reality, and in places like Texas and Louisiana they've been found wanting.
People are free in this country to believe whatever they want, and those same
people are free to vote. What they are not free from are the consequences of
holding those beliefs and casting those votes.

~~~
angersock
What I _believe_ is that my city came together in a time of great stress and
has been prevailing.

What I _believe_ is that my city's people decided that it was more important
to have growth and to bounce back than to limit itself in the face of known
weather.

What I _believe_ is that we are richer and more diverse because of the lack of
zoning and because of aggressive (if irresponsible) development, and that more
people had better lives than would have if we'd said "oh well i guess we
should give up".

What I _believe_ is that none of the people who haven't lived here for years
have much useful to say that isn't just virtue signalling and apocalyptic
rubbernecking.

And lastly, calling our people irrational while you enjoy the fruit of our
labors in the form of cheap gasoline, cheap imports, and good cancer care I
_believe_ is extremely tacky.

~~~
dang
Would you please not post rants like this to HN, regardless of how tacky other
people are?

~~~
QAPereo
Again, no need to be rude in getting your point across.

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blacksqr
"Après moi le déluge! is the watchword of every capitalist."

\--Karl Marx

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theseatoms
Hilarious to learn this week that the federal government eats a net loss while
subsidizing correlated flood risk.

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angersock
Isn't this exactly what Google did a month ago? </s>

(I know, I know, different type of developers. But still. :P

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justin_vanw
Yes, we should make sure everything is totally proof from any possible
disaster, no matter how unlikely or how little economic sense it makes. For
example, we should make sure cities can survive not only 500 year floods, like
in Houston, but 1 million year floods and direct asteroid strikes up to 1km in
diameter. However, I think even when we do this, eventually a city will be hit
by a 2km diameter asteroid, and qz.com will blame developers.

~~~
mozumder
Why are there adults that make slippery-slope arguments?

~~~
justin_vanw
It's not a slippery slope argument at all.. My point is that there is some
optimal amount of investment in disaster preparedness, and if you make that
optimal investment, and despite that a disaster overwhelms you, you still
acted rationally and optimally. Investing more than is optimal is stupid.

