Want to change the economics of floodplain development? Deny flood insurance to anyone who builds new structures within a floodway. Grandfather structures that already exist. But don’t sell flood insurance policies to anyone who wants to, for instance, buy a new condo in a high-rise in the floodway of the west fork of the San Jacinto. And don’t sell a commercial policy to the 50-story hotel next door.
Respect the Rivers
Harvey was a wake up call. It taught us to start respecting rivers by giving them the distance deserve. It’s time for taxpayers to stop encouraging risky developments with taxpayer subsidized flood insurance. When investors, mortgage lenders and buyers can’t get that insurance, they will turn their backs. It will be much harder to build such harebrained ideas.
Siding from home washed downstream during Harvey. Photo by Dan Monks.
Stop Subsidizing Risky Behavior
This isn’t such a radical notion. Most private insurers peg the price of insurance to risk. More risk, higher price. It’s simple. At a certain point, when behavior becomes too risky, you can’t get insurance at any price. Right now, people can get flood insurance anywhere because it’s subsidized by taxpayers. Artificially low rates encourage floodplain development and discourage conservation.
So we have a developer trying to build 3.2 million square feet next to an area where the county is simultaneously buying out homes that have flooded repetitively.
By weeding such high-risk developers out of the pool, the cost of flood insurance should come down for people who give rivers the respect they deserve and build a reasonable distance away.
Start Encouraging Conservation with Economic Incentives
For those who want waterfront views, and those who are willing and able to lose everything, go ahead. No one’s stopping you. Just don’t expect taxpayers to subsidize your insurance through the National Flood Insurance Plan. If developers, lenders, investors and buyers couldn’t get flood insurance on newly built floodway homes, demand for such homes would likely fall. Thus, developers would have an economic disincentive to buy that cheap floodplain land. Owners would leave it in timber or grass. And we could give them even bigger tax breaks for doing do. Take the tax rate on timber land in floodways down to zero.
Smarter Land Use Policies = Fewer Flooded Homes
More floodplain land might remain in the hands of Mother Nature. More natural green space would slow rain from getting to rivers and provide more natural retention. Less development in floodways and flood plains just might reduce flooding further from the river, too.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 3/23/2019
571 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/siding.jpg?fit=1885%2C1060&ssl=110601885adminadmin2019-03-23 17:27:342019-03-23 17:29:18Simple Policy Proposal to Change Economics of Floodplain Development
Jim Blackburn, a professor at Rice University noted for his work in predicting and modeling the effects of severe storms, has released an except from a larger paper that he is preparing with Amy Jaffe of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Houston ship channel, chemical plant and tank farm.
Refining Capacity Vs. Surge Height
The report begins by outlining the importance of these areas for national security. For instance, this Bay and Ship Channel are home to eight major refiners and more than 200 chemical plants that provide 12% of U.S. refining capacity, 27% of the nation’s jet fuel, 13% of the nation’s gasoline, and 25% of the nation’s ethylene and propylene.
Blackburn and Jaffe note that the largest surges recorded up the Houston Ship Channel to date were from Hurricane Ike in 2008 and Carla in 1961. Neither of those storms generated more than about 13 to 14 feet of surge, a level that can generally be accommodated by industry.
Modeling Surge Damage from Future Storms
The authors then play “what if.” What if the winds were 15 mph stronger and extended out a few miles farther? The “what if” scenarios are based on recent storms such as Hurricanes Irma and Maria (Category 4 and 5 storms) with hurricane force winds extending 80 miles out from the center. Such storms could generate surges in the range of 22 to 25 feet in the ship channel. Those are NOT levels that industry could handle with existing dikes.
An associate of Blackburn’s, Dr. Jamie Padgett of Rice’s SSPEED Center, predicts that some percentage of storage tanks would fail. They would either be lifted off their foundations, crushed by water or penetrated by debris. Dr. Padgett’s team estimated that a 24-foot surge event could lead to the release of at least 90 million gallons of oil and hazardous substances. It could threaten the US economy and raise concerns about the availability of transportation fuel.
Confined in Galveston Bay and its surrounding wetlands, such spills could also turn into an environmental debacle that lasts for decades. Far fetched? Consider what happened this week when a fire erupted in a few storage tanks at one facility in Deer Park. It shut down the entire city for close to a week.
Significantly, the modeled surge event does not include the effects of sea-level rise or climate change.
Inability to Deal with Mitigation
Blackburn and Jaffe then shift their focus to mitigation strategies such as the Ike Dike and the Galveston Bay Park Plan. I will not review those here; they have received much coverage in other venues. And the report contains far more detail than any summary could.
The authors conclude by saying, “A major threat exists to the refining and chemical industrial complex that is based around Galveston Bay. This issue has not received the attention that it should from a national security perspective, from a national economic stability perspective and from an environmental risk perspective. The SSPEED Center’s experience in modeling and planning to protect the channel highlights the disconnect between past observations and future likely events being encountered everyday throughout the world with our changing climate. We are facing situations that differ from the past, but we seemingly lack the institutional ability or fortitude to address these future risks and avoid the national security consequences that are foreseen and forewarned.”
“What If” We Actually Came to Grips with Flood Mitigation?
Whether you believe in climate change or not, it worries me to think about what would happen if a storm like Maria came up the throat of Galveston Bay like Ike did. We had two storms in the last decade (Ike and Harvey) that wiped out major portions of the region. The possibilities are not remote that another could strike before we prepare for it. I wish someone had done this kind of analysis with a rainfall event like Harvey before Harvey hit. Think how different life might be right now.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 3/22/2019
570 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Refinery_01.jpg?fit=1500%2C811&ssl=18111500adminadmin2019-03-21 22:43:062019-03-21 22:43:39Storm Surge and the Houston Ship Channel: A National Security Issue?
NOTE: This article has been updated to include the paragraph below entitled Floodplain Implementation Account. I also added a mention of a separate appropriations bill, SB500.
One of the most important pieces of legislation in Austin this session is SB7, sponsored by Senator Brandon Creighton. It relates to flood control planning and the funding of flood planning, mitigation, and infrastructure projects.
Light pole near River Bend in North Shore as Harvey receded. Note the “wet marks” several feet up on pole. Photo by Jim Balcom.
Status of SB7
The Texas Senate passed the bill unanimously yesterday. It is now engrossed and in the House. Engrossed means it has been recorded in its final legal form by the chamber in which it was introduced and passed to the opposite chamber.
SB 7 started life as SB 695, but was renumbered when it became one of the Lieutenant Governor’s top picks for the session. The lower number makes it one of the first bills to be considered, thus increasing its chances of passage during this session.
Last week, the Senate heard testimony on the bill. Yesterday, 31 senators voted by voice FOR the bill. None opposed it.
Creation of a Texas Infrastructure Resiliency Fund outside of the General Revenue Fund. Within the Resiliency Fund, it also creates:
A Floodplain Management Account to provide financing for: (A) the collection and analysis of flood-related information; (B) flood planning, protection, mitigation, or adaptation; (C) the provision of flood-related information to the public through educational or outreach programs; or (D) evaluating the response to and mitigation of flood incidents affecting residential property, including multifamily units, located in floodplains.
A Floodplain Implementation Account to grant, low-interest, or zero-interest loans. Purposes: (A) to provide matching funds that enable local governments to participate in a federal program for a flood project; (B) to provide loans at or below market interest rates for planning or design costs, permitting costs, or other costs associated with state or federal regulatory activities for flooding; or (C) to provide grants that enable local governments to participate in a federal program for the development of a hazard mitigation plan.
A Hurricane Harvey account, also within the resiliency fund to grant low-interest or zero-interest loans to eligible political subdivisions. The loans can be used as a local match to enable political subdivisions to qualify for a federal match. The loans will help local governments seeking federal grants for hazard-mitigation and public-assistance plans or the cost of flood-project planning, design, permitting, etc. associated with state or federal regulatory activities.
A Federal Matching Fund Account. The board may use the account only to meet matching requirements for projects funded partially by federal money, including projects funded by the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
Rules regarding the distribution of funds, administration, transparency, etc.
What SB7 Does NOT Include
Not in the engrossed version sent to the House: a specific dollar amount to establish the fund. When introduced, SB 695 called for $3 billion to be transferred from the “rainy day” fund to establish the resiliency fund. That’s no longer in the bill.
In its place, the bill now has some vague language that refers to:
Money deposited to the credit of the account under Section 251.004, Insurance Code;
Money directly appropriated to the board;
Money from gifts or grants from the United States government, local or regional governments, private sources, or other sources.
This bill sets up the accounts. A separate bill, SB500 handles the appropriations for the accounts.
How SB7 Will Help Flood Mitigation
Still, if funded, the Texas Infrastructure Resilience Fund, will provide a wonderful vehicle to help jumpstart critical flood mitigation projects. It provides low- or no-cost LOANS, to help local governments get matching funds to:
Study flood problems
Design solutions
Fund construction.
Why SB7 Is Necessary
These loans can be used to help local governments bypass the begging phase of flood mitigation where they look for grants to fund grant writers or study problems. Example: It took almost 18 months after Harvey for Montgomery County, the City of Houston, Harris County and the SJRA to come up with a local match and get FEMA to cover the rest of a $2 million San Jacinto River Basin Study. That study will that take another 18 months to complete.
SB7 could have saved half that time. SB7 deserves the support of all Texans who would like to see flood mitigation efforts accelerated.
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/image4-1-e1553198926707.jpeg?fit=966%2C1400&ssl=11400966adminadmin2019-03-21 15:12:382019-03-22 07:22:12Creighton’s SB7 Passed Unanimously by Senate, Bill Goes to House Today
Simple Policy Proposal to Change Economics of Floodplain Development
Want to change the economics of floodplain development? Deny flood insurance to anyone who builds new structures within a floodway. Grandfather structures that already exist. But don’t sell flood insurance policies to anyone who wants to, for instance, buy a new condo in a high-rise in the floodway of the west fork of the San Jacinto. And don’t sell a commercial policy to the 50-story hotel next door.
Respect the Rivers
Harvey was a wake up call. It taught us to start respecting rivers by giving them the distance deserve. It’s time for taxpayers to stop encouraging risky developments with taxpayer subsidized flood insurance. When investors, mortgage lenders and buyers can’t get that insurance, they will turn their backs. It will be much harder to build such harebrained ideas.
Stop Subsidizing Risky Behavior
This isn’t such a radical notion. Most private insurers peg the price of insurance to risk. More risk, higher price. It’s simple. At a certain point, when behavior becomes too risky, you can’t get insurance at any price. Right now, people can get flood insurance anywhere because it’s subsidized by taxpayers. Artificially low rates encourage floodplain development and discourage conservation.
By weeding such high-risk developers out of the pool, the cost of flood insurance should come down for people who give rivers the respect they deserve and build a reasonable distance away.
Start Encouraging Conservation with Economic Incentives
For those who want waterfront views, and those who are willing and able to lose everything, go ahead. No one’s stopping you. Just don’t expect taxpayers to subsidize your insurance through the National Flood Insurance Plan. If developers, lenders, investors and buyers couldn’t get flood insurance on newly built floodway homes, demand for such homes would likely fall. Thus, developers would have an economic disincentive to buy that cheap floodplain land. Owners would leave it in timber or grass. And we could give them even bigger tax breaks for doing do. Take the tax rate on timber land in floodways down to zero.
Smarter Land Use Policies = Fewer Flooded Homes
More floodplain land might remain in the hands of Mother Nature. More natural green space would slow rain from getting to rivers and provide more natural retention. Less development in floodways and flood plains just might reduce flooding further from the river, too.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 3/23/2019
571 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Storm Surge and the Houston Ship Channel: A National Security Issue?
Jim Blackburn, a professor at Rice University noted for his work in predicting and modeling the effects of severe storms, has released an except from a larger paper that he is preparing with Amy Jaffe of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The report, titled “Storm Surge and the Future of the Houston Ship Channel,” models a series of storms with increasing intensity to examine their impact on Galveston, Galveston Bay and the Houston Ship Channel.
Refining Capacity Vs. Surge Height
The report begins by outlining the importance of these areas for national security. For instance, this Bay and Ship Channel are home to eight major refiners and more than 200 chemical plants that provide 12% of U.S. refining capacity, 27% of the nation’s jet fuel, 13% of the nation’s gasoline, and 25% of the nation’s ethylene and propylene.
Blackburn and Jaffe note that the largest surges recorded up the Houston Ship Channel to date were from Hurricane Ike in 2008 and Carla in 1961. Neither of those storms generated more than about 13 to 14 feet of surge, a level that can generally be accommodated by industry.
Modeling Surge Damage from Future Storms
The authors then play “what if.” What if the winds were 15 mph stronger and extended out a few miles farther? The “what if” scenarios are based on recent storms such as Hurricanes Irma and Maria (Category 4 and 5 storms) with hurricane force winds extending 80 miles out from the center. Such storms could generate surges in the range of 22 to 25 feet in the ship channel. Those are NOT levels that industry could handle with existing dikes.
An associate of Blackburn’s, Dr. Jamie Padgett of Rice’s SSPEED Center, predicts that some percentage of storage tanks would fail. They would either be lifted off their foundations, crushed by water or penetrated by debris. Dr. Padgett’s team estimated that a 24-foot surge event could lead to the release of at least 90 million gallons of oil and hazardous substances. It could threaten the US economy and raise concerns about the availability of transportation fuel.
Confined in Galveston Bay and its surrounding wetlands, such spills could also turn into an environmental debacle that lasts for decades. Far fetched? Consider what happened this week when a fire erupted in a few storage tanks at one facility in Deer Park. It shut down the entire city for close to a week.
Significantly, the modeled surge event does not include the effects of sea-level rise or climate change.
Inability to Deal with Mitigation
Blackburn and Jaffe then shift their focus to mitigation strategies such as the Ike Dike and the Galveston Bay Park Plan. I will not review those here; they have received much coverage in other venues. And the report contains far more detail than any summary could.
The authors conclude by saying, “A major threat exists to the refining and chemical industrial complex that is based around Galveston Bay. This issue has not received the attention that it should from a national security perspective, from a national economic stability perspective and from an environmental risk perspective. The SSPEED Center’s experience in modeling and planning to protect the channel highlights the disconnect between past observations and future likely events being encountered everyday throughout the world with our changing climate. We are facing situations that differ from the past, but we seemingly lack the institutional ability or fortitude to address these future risks and avoid the national security consequences that are foreseen and forewarned.”
“What If” We Actually Came to Grips with Flood Mitigation?
Whether you believe in climate change or not, it worries me to think about what would happen if a storm like Maria came up the throat of Galveston Bay like Ike did. We had two storms in the last decade (Ike and Harvey) that wiped out major portions of the region. The possibilities are not remote that another could strike before we prepare for it. I wish someone had done this kind of analysis with a rainfall event like Harvey before Harvey hit. Think how different life might be right now.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 3/22/2019
570 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Creighton’s SB7 Passed Unanimously by Senate, Bill Goes to House Today
NOTE: This article has been updated to include the paragraph below entitled Floodplain Implementation Account. I also added a mention of a separate appropriations bill, SB500.
One of the most important pieces of legislation in Austin this session is SB7, sponsored by Senator Brandon Creighton. It relates to flood control planning and the funding of flood planning, mitigation, and infrastructure projects.
Status of SB7
The Texas Senate passed the bill unanimously yesterday. It is now engrossed and in the House. Engrossed means it has been recorded in its final legal form by the chamber in which it was introduced and passed to the opposite chamber.
SB 7 started life as SB 695, but was renumbered when it became one of the Lieutenant Governor’s top picks for the session. The lower number makes it one of the first bills to be considered, thus increasing its chances of passage during this session.
Last week, the Senate heard testimony on the bill. Yesterday, 31 senators voted by voice FOR the bill. None opposed it.
What SB7 Includes
Key provisions of the final version of SB7 include:
What SB7 Does NOT Include
Not in the engrossed version sent to the House: a specific dollar amount to establish the fund. When introduced, SB 695 called for $3 billion to be transferred from the “rainy day” fund to establish the resiliency fund. That’s no longer in the bill.
In its place, the bill now has some vague language that refers to:
This bill sets up the accounts. A separate bill, SB500 handles the appropriations for the accounts.
How SB7 Will Help Flood Mitigation
Still, if funded, the Texas Infrastructure Resilience Fund, will provide a wonderful vehicle to help jumpstart critical flood mitigation projects. It provides low- or no-cost LOANS, to help local governments get matching funds to:
Why SB7 Is Necessary
These loans can be used to help local governments bypass the begging phase of flood mitigation where they look for grants to fund grant writers or study problems. Example: It took almost 18 months after Harvey for Montgomery County, the City of Houston, Harris County and the SJRA to come up with a local match and get FEMA to cover the rest of a $2 million San Jacinto River Basin Study. That study will that take another 18 months to complete.
SB7 could have saved half that time. SB7 deserves the support of all Texans who would like to see flood mitigation efforts accelerated.
To review the status of other legislation affecting the Lake Houston area, check the Legislation page of this website.
Posted by Bob Rehak on March 21, 2019
569 Days since Hurricane Harvey