Two nights ago I started to hug my wife. “Not tonight,” she said.
“What’s wrong,” I asked. “Headache?”
“No,” she sighed. “Climate change.”
The temperature in the room dropped about 10 degrees.
“I see what you mean,” I said.
Ironically, the next morning, I opened the New York Times to an article by Brooke Jarvis. The title: “Climate Change Is Keeping Therapists Up at Night: How anxiety about the planet’s future is transforming the practice of psychotherapy.”
It began with the experience of one psychotherapist to bring issues into focus. He said that many potential patients are looking for someone to talk to about climate change, only to be told (by others, not him) that they are overreacting.
Climate Psychology Alliance of North America and Eco-Anxiety
Enter stage left a group of about 100 “climate-aware” psychotherapists who call themselves the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America. According to Jarvis, they primarily deal with three types of issues:
Acute trauma of living through climate disasters
Fear of a collapsing future
Psychosocial decay from disruptive changes.
Collectively, they call it “eco-anxiety” or “a chronic fear of environmental doom.”
It’s not clear from the rest of Jarvis’ story whether the psychotherapists have reached any consensus yet about how to treat this emerging malady.
Conflicting Info About Breadth of Concerns
Jarvis cites a nationally representative 2022 survey of more than 1,000 people from Yale and George Mason University. Researchers found that a majority of Americans (64%) say they are at least “somewhat worried” about global warming.
However, Jarvis does not report that the same research also found about 90% of Americans experience no distress at all about global warming.
Should psychotherapists bring climate concerns up even when clients don’t? That’s not clear either.
But the climate psychologists agree that they should validate their clients’ climate-related emotions as “reasonable, not pathological.” The climate shrinks believe they should make clients feel their fear is a “rational response to a world that’s very scary.”
Link between Eco-Reporting and Eco-Anxiety Not Examined
While not denying climate change, I also personally believe the threat may be artificially exaggerated.
The New York Times article does not examine eco-reporting that contributes to eco-anxiety. Some days, I’m afraid to open a newspaper because I may find Republicans can’t elect a speaker…due to climate change. (Just joking.)
Comments on the New York Times article seemed polarized. About half felt eco-anxiety was justified. The other half felt it was manufactured by media.
In that regard, I have previously posted about the Associated Press policy of taking money from foundations with interests in renewable energy to hire 20 reporters who focus on climate change.
Before the Internet undermined local newspapers, news organization sold advertising to generate revenue that paid employees. Ads clearly showed client’s logos. News organizations jealously guarded their editorial integrity; news almost never crossed the line into advertising.
That’s no longer the case. Now, 20 reporters are looking for any way possible to connect random weather events to climate change…using the most tenuous of threads. And if they can’t find one, they say, “So-and-so worries that climate change may make his problem worse in the future.” But they present no real statistical proof.
Not to make light of anyone’s feelings or circumstances, as I scrolled through other headlines this morning, I learned that…
Droughtsmay intensify in the Amazon in the future…due to climate change.
Fewer young peoplemay fish in Alaska in the future…due to climate change.
Such stories are rapidly becoming a parody of themselves. Regardless…
Repetition Makes Claims Rise to Level of Assumed Truth
Through sheer repetition of such claims day after day, people assume their truth. Individual events such as a flood, drought, freeze, heatwave or windstorm may or may not exemplify larger trends. But reports rarely present actual proof they do.
Rather, they quote people who have suffered some kind of weather-related damage and who fear such events may become more common in the future…due to climate change.
Of course, who can disprove the future? That’s pretty safe ground for a reporter.
I asked one of the area’s leading psychotherapists in Houston to review the New York Times article. She replied, “Climate change didn’t come up once in my 40 years of private practice.”
Posted by Bob Rehak on 10/22/23
2245 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/IMG_0205-e1698010167513.jpg?fit=1100%2C825&ssl=18251100adminadmin2023-10-22 16:53:292023-10-22 17:46:12Welcome to Climate Psychotherapy
Homebuyers beware. Flood risk is a shifting target.
This morning, I began reading more than 100 pages of legal briefs in the appeal of the upstream Addicks and Barker awards. I could not help but think how hundreds of millions of dollars in losses and untold heartbreak could have been averted with more due diligence on the part of all involved – buyers, developers and the Army Corps.
Background of Case
For those new to the area, Addicks and Barker are two reservoirs on Houston’s west side. The Army Corps built them back in the 1930s to protect downtown Houston and the ship channel. However, the Corps did not buy all the land inside the reservoirs that was subject to flooding. Later, developers started building on that land. And people bought the homes despite the risks.
During Harvey, hundreds of homes built inside the reservoirs flooded. Residents sued the Corps and won. But the Corps is now appealing the case.
In 2022, a judge ruled in favor of the residents and awarded them more than half a billion in damages. The damages included repair costs, replacement of belongings, and compensation for value lost in their property. But facing hundreds of millions of dollars in payouts, the government isn’t giving up easily. It appealed.
The case has taken more than six years to get to this point and it is far from over. No telling what the legal fees have cost both sides. Or whether plaintiffs will ever see a penny.
This should serve as a lesson to everyone buying a home and to their real estate agents, mortgage lenders, and surveyors.
Tools to Help You Avoid Becoming a Flood Victim
Although tools to identify flood risk may not have been commonly available and readily understandable when the plaintiffs bought homes inside the reservoirs, such tools do exist now.
They both show the extent of potential flooding in this area, but each has different strengths. And they show slightly different results. That should raise some cautions if you think of risk as a black-or-white issue.
Use USGS National Map for Elevations, Slopes, Contours
You can layer these maps and vary their transparency. But the real magic of the USGS National Map is in the measurement tool for elevation profiling. Below is an example.
After activating the elevation profile tool, I drew a line from a residential neighborhood inside the Barker Reservoir, across the dam, to an area outside the reservoir. I chose an area in the southwest corner of the reservoir that flooded during Harvey. It showed this.
Note elevation changes on right where line crosses the dam (gray bar). Homes above the gray are inside reservoir.
The red X shows the height of the dam (108 feet) in the elevation profile. The brown area in the elevation-profile box shows the elevation of the dam, homes, streets and drainage channels.
Homes are generally 6-8 feet BELOW the height of the dam. That should be a giant red flag for anyone considering buying a house inside the reservoir.
Next, zooming out, I turned on the hydro layer. The red circle below, indicated the approximate area and location of the map above.
Note how the flood pool of the reservoir extends beyond the entire neighborhood shown above.
FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer Viewer for Floodplain Information
FEMA actually uses the elevation information from the USGS national map. But FEMA superimposes floodplains to show flood risk in several zones.
Note difference in two maps above in their bottom left corners. FEMA shows some homes inside the reservoir that are outside of mapped flood zones. Aqua = 100-year and tan = 500-year floodplains.
The difference noted above raises an important point. FEMA’s maps are estimates of the probability of unknown future events based on the frequency of extremely rare past events. Those estimates may not have been in effect when the neighborhood in question was built around the time of Tropical Storm Allison in 2001. Maps based on Allison weren’t adopted until around 2007 and are still in effect today.
Harris County Flood Control and FEMA update flood maps periodically when new monster storms come along and surpass past rainfall probability estimates. For instance, FEMA is working on new flood maps based on Harvey, but has not yet released them.
So, if you’re thinking of betting your life savings on a home in a risky area, the best things to do are these:
Ask yourself, “Can I afford to lose everything?” Many families in the reservoirs did.
Consult an independent engineer without any financial incentive in the purchase, i.e., making the deal go though.
Evaluate a variety of homes, not just one. And look closely at the safety margins.
If a home is two feet above the 100-year floodplain, look for one that’s higher. Things change regularly, usually in one direction.
Make “flood avoidance” more important than kitchen appliances in your purchase decision.
A Cautionary Tale Based on Personal Experience
Back in the early 1980s, I owned a house in Dallas near a creek that an engineer and the city certified were 2-feet above the 100-year floodplain. The home flooded within two years, due to rapid, insufficiently mitigated growth upstream.
Several years later, when I bought a house in Kingwood, I looked at ten homes and bought the one on the highest ground. More than 30 years later, all nine of the others flooded during Harvey even though they were all reportedly above the 100-year flood plain.
For a thorough description of why flood risk is a moving target, read this post – Why Do We Flood?
After two years of drought, it’s easy to become complacent about flood risk. Don’t. Ask anyone who has flooded. They will tell you. Your life can change overnight. So homebuyers beware.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 10/21/2023
2244 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Barker-Hydro.jpg?fit=1200%2C842&ssl=18421200adminadmin2023-10-21 18:33:462023-10-21 18:57:57Homebuyers Beware: Flood Risk is Shifting Target
Harris County Flood Control, SJRA, and the Cities of Humble and Houston using funding provided in part by the Texas Water Development Board are searching for sediment solutions in the Upper San Jacinto River Basin. Their major scientific study includes all or parts of seven counties: Harris, Montgomery, Waller, Grimes, Walker, San Jacinto and Liberty – all land draining into Lake Houston.
From Technical Memorandum 1 of the Upper San Jacinto River Basin Regional Sedimentation Study.
The high-level goal: to better manage sediment in the river basin. Sediment reduces both floodway conveyance and the storage capacity of Lake Houston. Both contribute to the frequency and severity of flooding.
Among other things, the study partners hope to prioritize sediment hot spots so they can develop sediment solutions and recommendations.
I hope they look at Colony Ridge. It exemplifies a major hot spot and points the way to an obvious sediment solution – better enforcement of existing regulations.
Scope and Status of Sediment Study
The study is now about half complete. With much of the fieldwork complete, the partners will next focus on modeling, hotspot identification, area prioritization and sediment solutions, according to Matt Barrett, Water Resources and Flood Management Division Manager atSJRA.
To date, the study has examined a variety of factors:
Sediment Solutions Must Address Development Practices
Erosion occurs naturally. But poor development practices can accelerate the rate of erosion unnaturally.
Regulations in Liberty County call for backslope interceptor swales to prevent sheet flow over the sides of ditches. I have yet to see one such system anywhere in the 30+ square miles of Colony Ridge. What you typically see is this.
All that sediment washes downstream where it reduces the carrying capacity of rivers and the storage capacity of Lake Houston.
Liberty County regulations also call for planting grass on the side slopes of ditches and detention basins. The grass reduces erosion, too. But you don’t see much grass on those side slopes either.
Compare the ditch above with the ditch below in Harris County to see how grass and backslope interceptor swales can reduce erosion.
Small swales behind main slopes capture sheet flow heading toward the ditch. Pipes then take runoff to the bottom of ditch, thus reducing erosion on side slopes.
Here’s Colony Ridge again.
Three-mile-long Colony Ridge drainage ditch has no grass or backslope interceptor swales.
Address the Elephant in the Room Before the Next Disaster
Ironically, both Liberty and Harris County have almost identical regulations for erosion control. Harris County enforces them; Liberty County doesn’t.
Enforcement of development regulations is the elephant in the room.
So, as the SJRA and its partners search for sediment solutions, here’s one simple recommendation. Enforce regulations already on the books.
Colony Ridge and other developments that skirt regulations represent a disaster waiting to happen. Unfortunately, it will probably take a disaster, such as Harvey, to cause leaders to take action. But by then, it will be too late.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 10/20/23
2242 Days since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/20231006-RJR_6038-1.jpg?fit=1100%2C733&ssl=17331100adminadmin2023-10-20 14:08:222023-10-20 17:39:42Search For Sediment Solutions Should Lead Straight to Colony Ridge
Welcome to Climate Psychotherapy
Two nights ago I started to hug my wife. “Not tonight,” she said.
“What’s wrong,” I asked. “Headache?”
“No,” she sighed. “Climate change.”
The temperature in the room dropped about 10 degrees.
“I see what you mean,” I said.
Ironically, the next morning, I opened the New York Times to an article by Brooke Jarvis. The title: “Climate Change Is Keeping Therapists Up at Night: How anxiety about the planet’s future is transforming the practice of psychotherapy.”
It began with the experience of one psychotherapist to bring issues into focus. He said that many potential patients are looking for someone to talk to about climate change, only to be told (by others, not him) that they are overreacting.
Climate Psychology Alliance of North America and Eco-Anxiety
Enter stage left a group of about 100 “climate-aware” psychotherapists who call themselves the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America. According to Jarvis, they primarily deal with three types of issues:
Collectively, they call it “eco-anxiety” or “a chronic fear of environmental doom.”
It’s not clear from the rest of Jarvis’ story whether the psychotherapists have reached any consensus yet about how to treat this emerging malady.
Conflicting Info About Breadth of Concerns
Jarvis cites a nationally representative 2022 survey of more than 1,000 people from Yale and George Mason University. Researchers found that a majority of Americans (64%) say they are at least “somewhat worried” about global warming.
However, Jarvis does not report that the same research also found about 90% of Americans experience no distress at all about global warming.
Should psychotherapists bring climate concerns up even when clients don’t? That’s not clear either.
But the climate psychologists agree that they should validate their clients’ climate-related emotions as “reasonable, not pathological.” The climate shrinks believe they should make clients feel their fear is a “rational response to a world that’s very scary.”
Link between Eco-Reporting and Eco-Anxiety Not Examined
While not denying climate change, I also personally believe the threat may be artificially exaggerated.
The New York Times article does not examine eco-reporting that contributes to eco-anxiety. Some days, I’m afraid to open a newspaper because I may find Republicans can’t elect a speaker…due to climate change. (Just joking.)
Comments on the New York Times article seemed polarized. About half felt eco-anxiety was justified. The other half felt it was manufactured by media.
In that regard, I have previously posted about the Associated Press policy of taking money from foundations with interests in renewable energy to hire 20 reporters who focus on climate change.
Before the Internet undermined local newspapers, news organization sold advertising to generate revenue that paid employees. Ads clearly showed client’s logos. News organizations jealously guarded their editorial integrity; news almost never crossed the line into advertising.
That’s no longer the case. Now, 20 reporters are looking for any way possible to connect random weather events to climate change…using the most tenuous of threads. And if they can’t find one, they say, “So-and-so worries that climate change may make his problem worse in the future.” But they present no real statistical proof.
Not to make light of anyone’s feelings or circumstances, as I scrolled through other headlines this morning, I learned that…
Such stories are rapidly becoming a parody of themselves. Regardless…
Repetition Makes Claims Rise to Level of Assumed Truth
Through sheer repetition of such claims day after day, people assume their truth. Individual events such as a flood, drought, freeze, heatwave or windstorm may or may not exemplify larger trends. But reports rarely present actual proof they do.
Rather, they quote people who have suffered some kind of weather-related damage and who fear such events may become more common in the future…due to climate change.
Of course, who can disprove the future? That’s pretty safe ground for a reporter.
I asked one of the area’s leading psychotherapists in Houston to review the New York Times article. She replied, “Climate change didn’t come up once in my 40 years of private practice.”
Posted by Bob Rehak on 10/22/23
2245 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Homebuyers Beware: Flood Risk is Shifting Target
Homebuyers beware. Flood risk is a shifting target.
This morning, I began reading more than 100 pages of legal briefs in the appeal of the upstream Addicks and Barker awards. I could not help but think how hundreds of millions of dollars in losses and untold heartbreak could have been averted with more due diligence on the part of all involved – buyers, developers and the Army Corps.
Background of Case
For those new to the area, Addicks and Barker are two reservoirs on Houston’s west side. The Army Corps built them back in the 1930s to protect downtown Houston and the ship channel. However, the Corps did not buy all the land inside the reservoirs that was subject to flooding. Later, developers started building on that land. And people bought the homes despite the risks.
In 2022, a judge ruled in favor of the residents and awarded them more than half a billion in damages. The damages included repair costs, replacement of belongings, and compensation for value lost in their property. But facing hundreds of millions of dollars in payouts, the government isn’t giving up easily. It appealed.
The case has taken more than six years to get to this point and it is far from over. No telling what the legal fees have cost both sides. Or whether plaintiffs will ever see a penny.
This should serve as a lesson to everyone buying a home and to their real estate agents, mortgage lenders, and surveyors.
Tools to Help You Avoid Becoming a Flood Victim
Although tools to identify flood risk may not have been commonly available and readily understandable when the plaintiffs bought homes inside the reservoirs, such tools do exist now.
Two of the easiest to use are the USGS National Map and FEMA’s National Flood Hazard Layer Viewer.
They both show the extent of potential flooding in this area, but each has different strengths. And they show slightly different results. That should raise some cautions if you think of risk as a black-or-white issue.
Use USGS National Map for Elevations, Slopes, Contours
USGS excels at mapping elevations, slopes and contours. This post explains how to use the National Map. Backgrounds include:
You can layer these maps and vary their transparency. But the real magic of the USGS National Map is in the measurement tool for elevation profiling. Below is an example.
After activating the elevation profile tool, I drew a line from a residential neighborhood inside the Barker Reservoir, across the dam, to an area outside the reservoir. I chose an area in the southwest corner of the reservoir that flooded during Harvey. It showed this.
The red X shows the height of the dam (108 feet) in the elevation profile. The brown area in the elevation-profile box shows the elevation of the dam, homes, streets and drainage channels.
Next, zooming out, I turned on the hydro layer. The red circle below, indicated the approximate area and location of the map above.
FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer Viewer for Floodplain Information
FEMA actually uses the elevation information from the USGS national map. But FEMA superimposes floodplains to show flood risk in several zones.
The difference noted above raises an important point. FEMA’s maps are estimates of the probability of unknown future events based on the frequency of extremely rare past events. Those estimates may not have been in effect when the neighborhood in question was built around the time of Tropical Storm Allison in 2001. Maps based on Allison weren’t adopted until around 2007 and are still in effect today.
Harris County Flood Control and FEMA update flood maps periodically when new monster storms come along and surpass past rainfall probability estimates. For instance, FEMA is working on new flood maps based on Harvey, but has not yet released them.
So, if you’re thinking of betting your life savings on a home in a risky area, the best things to do are these:
A Cautionary Tale Based on Personal Experience
Back in the early 1980s, I owned a house in Dallas near a creek that an engineer and the city certified were 2-feet above the 100-year floodplain. The home flooded within two years, due to rapid, insufficiently mitigated growth upstream.
Several years later, when I bought a house in Kingwood, I looked at ten homes and bought the one on the highest ground. More than 30 years later, all nine of the others flooded during Harvey even though they were all reportedly above the 100-year flood plain.
For a thorough description of why flood risk is a moving target, read this post – Why Do We Flood?
After two years of drought, it’s easy to become complacent about flood risk. Don’t. Ask anyone who has flooded. They will tell you. Your life can change overnight. So homebuyers beware.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 10/21/2023
2244 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Search For Sediment Solutions Should Lead Straight to Colony Ridge
Harris County Flood Control, SJRA, and the Cities of Humble and Houston using funding provided in part by the Texas Water Development Board are searching for sediment solutions in the Upper San Jacinto River Basin. Their major scientific study includes all or parts of seven counties: Harris, Montgomery, Waller, Grimes, Walker, San Jacinto and Liberty – all land draining into Lake Houston.
The high-level goal: to better manage sediment in the river basin. Sediment reduces both floodway conveyance and the storage capacity of Lake Houston. Both contribute to the frequency and severity of flooding.
Among other things, the study partners hope to prioritize sediment hot spots so they can develop sediment solutions and recommendations.
I hope they look at Colony Ridge. It exemplifies a major hot spot and points the way to an obvious sediment solution – better enforcement of existing regulations.
Scope and Status of Sediment Study
The study is now about half complete. With much of the fieldwork complete, the partners will next focus on modeling, hotspot identification, area prioritization and sediment solutions, according to Matt Barrett, Water Resources and Flood Management Division Manager atSJRA.
To date, the study has examined a variety of factors:
The Colony Ridge area receives some of the highest rainfall totals and highest intensity rains in the river basin.
Colony Ridge also ranks among the most erodible areas in the entire river basin.
So, you would hope that a development 50% larger than Manhattan, which is decimating forests and filling in wetlands would receive some scrutiny.
Sediment Solutions Must Address Development Practices
Erosion occurs naturally. But poor development practices can accelerate the rate of erosion unnaturally.
Regulations in Liberty County call for backslope interceptor swales to prevent sheet flow over the sides of ditches. I have yet to see one such system anywhere in the 30+ square miles of Colony Ridge. What you typically see is this.
Liberty County regulations also call for planting grass on the side slopes of ditches and detention basins. The grass reduces erosion, too. But you don’t see much grass on those side slopes either.
Compare the ditch above with the ditch below in Harris County to see how grass and backslope interceptor swales can reduce erosion.
Here’s Colony Ridge again.
Address the Elephant in the Room Before the Next Disaster
Ironically, both Liberty and Harris County have almost identical regulations for erosion control. Harris County enforces them; Liberty County doesn’t.
So, as the SJRA and its partners search for sediment solutions, here’s one simple recommendation. Enforce regulations already on the books.
Colony Ridge and other developments that skirt regulations represent a disaster waiting to happen. Unfortunately, it will probably take a disaster, such as Harvey, to cause leaders to take action. But by then, it will be too late.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 10/20/23
2242 Days since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.