What We Should Have Learned About Flooding in the Last 3333 Days

Today is a repeating digit day: 3333 Days since Hurricane Harvey. So, this seems like an opportunity to look back at what we have learned about flooding and flood mitigation in that time. Or at least should have learned.

I’ve published 3199 posts containing 2.2 million words since then – the equivalent of 27 novels … about flooding. One every four months.

Even the most dedicated readers find that daunting. So, I’m trying to organize what I have learned into a book. You can find the outline on my Lessons page. But even that is daunting. So, let me boil the lessons down even further – into five key takeaways.

Carry Flood Insurance/Be Prepared

During Harvey, 64% of homes flooded in Harris County did not carry flood insurance.

In Southeast Texas, flooding can happen suddenly … anywhere. You need to be prepared. That includes carrying flood insurance. Don’t expect the government to make you whole after a flood. Aid is limited. Applications are laborious. Competition for limited funds is stiff.

And the documents you need to apply for government aid, i.e., real-estate titles, may have been destroyed in the flood. Digitize your important documents, encrypt them, and store them online so that they are always accessible, even if your safety deposit box floods.

And remember that while homeowner’s insurance may cover water damage, it almost never covers damage from rising floodwaters. Read your policies carefully.

Understand that Floodplains are a Shifting Target

Floodplains tend to expand for a variety of reasons having mostly to do with insufficiently mitigated upstream development and our inability to predict exactly how much rain might fall in an extreme event.

The safety of your family and home depends on your distance from and elevation above floodwaters. So when purchasing a home, select one far from flooding sources – farther than the flood surveys say you need. Give yourself a generous safety margin. And then double it.

Floodplain maps will change over time and you could find floodwaters lapping at your foundation before you pay off your mortgage. When I bought my house 30 years before Harvey, I was more than a mile from the nearest floodplain. Now the floodplain comes halfway up my property – to exactly where the water stopped during Harvey.

Not Everyone Shares Your Priorities

It’s far easier to prevent flooding than fix it after the need becomes apparent. Here we are 3333 days since Hurricane Harvey. And we’re still mired in engineering studies, grant applications, fund raising, political tug-of-wars over who should get help first, consensus building, and trying to align political jurisdictions with different interests.

Not everyone places a high priority on flood mitigation. In the controversy over Lake Conroe lowering and pre-release for instance, the Lake Conroe Association commissioned an engineering study that radically underestimated the extent of Lake Houston Area flooding to support the desired conclusion that lake lowering wouldn’t help.

Public safety may be your highest priority after getting flooded. But the owners of undeveloped property upstream may be lobbying in Austin for their right to develop their property as they see fit. And they sure don’t want downstream residents spoiling their fishing experience on Lake Conroe.

Flooding is like the death of a 1,000 cuts. In most cases, watersheds are far larger than the jurisdictions that control them. So, no one group is responsible for oversight of development, mining, floodplain preservation, road building, dredging, etc.

Ryko drainage impact study illustration showing outline and floodplains. — At the confluence of San Jacinto West Fork and Spring Creek, a developer is trying to build up to 7,000 homes in one of the most flood-prone areas in the Houston region. One of the area’s leading hydrologists has said that the development would be like aiming a fire hose at the Humble/Kingwood area.

But after a flood, it takes forever to line up all those dominoes. Witness the paucity of flood-mitigation progress made in the last 3333 days. And the difficulty State Rep. Dennis Paul has had passing legislation to create a river-basin-wide flood-control district.

Money Has a Short Memory

People and money have short memories and few flood victims understand flooding statistics.

Almost 10 years after a flood, people need to get on with their lives. Kitchen layouts may count for more in a home-buying decision than the depth of flooding experienced years ago in a record storm.

So they rationalize. “That was an extreme event,” they say. “What are the chances of it happening again?” Well, a 100-year flood has a 1% chance of happening EVERY year. And indeed, between 2015 and 2019, the Houston area experienced five 100-year-plus floods in five years. And three of the events were non-tropical in origin.

Leadership Matters

Elect leaders who will enforce fair and sensible regulation that protects property rights and flood victims alike. There’s not enough money or willpower in the world to fix all the flooding problems caused by bad decisions in the past.

In that regard, before you cast your vote, see how many Freedom-of-Information Act Requests an incumbent’s office has denied. Public information belongs to you, not bureaucrats.

Also see how many key department head positions they’ve filled with unqualified political supporters.

The mid-term election is just weeks away. Make sure the people we elect: