We Won World War II in Half the Time That It’s Taking to Start Harvey Flood-Mitigation Projects
3/1/25 – More than 60 flood-mitigation and disaster-relief projects identified after Hurricane Harvey have yet to begin. We won World War II in half that time.
Between Pearl Harbor and the surrender of Japan, 1349 days elapsed. But more than twice that number of days have elapsed since Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
At 1349 Days after Harvey, I wrote a post entitled “It’s Official: Harvey Flood Mitigation Is Taking Longer than World War II.” The bittersweet post expressed disappointment about the lack of progress … tempered with hope for the future. But sadly, many of the observations I made then are true today. We still:
- Are dredging the mouth of the San Jacinto West Fork, which backed water up into thousands of homes and businesses.
- Have not formed a Lake Houston Dredging and Maintenance District.
- Are fighting with each other over which neighborhoods get their flood-mitigation projects started first.
- Have not turned one shovel of dirt at any of the upstream sites identified for stormwater detention in the San Jacinto River Basin Master Drainage Plan.
- Are still studying additional floodgates for the Lake Houston Dam.
- Have not started distributing $1.1 billion allocated to Harris County by HUD and the Texas GLO for disaster recovery and flood mitigation projects.
Around the time of my first World War II post, I also tried to understand why mitigation took so long. See these posts:
- Why Does Flood-Mitigation Funding Take So Long?
- “We Must Streamline Disaster Recovery Before the Next Disaster,” by George P. Bush, then Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office.
Bush provided numerous recommendations to cut red tape. But sadly, few, if any, have been implemented.
Failure to Prepare is Preparing to Fail
During the last Harris County Commissioner’s Court Meeting, we witnessed Commissioners struggling with this slow-motion disaster that has become a second disaster in itself.
They even spent a full hour requesting an update from HCFCD on the status of bond projects. Those updates used to be a regular monthly report.
Failure to prepare for flooding that you know will come is an invitation to heartbreak and misery. When the next flood happens, the damage will be self-inflicted.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 3/1/25
2741 Days since Hurricane Harvey
