Mark your calendar. On February 19, 2020, the Bayou City Initiative will hold its first meeting of 2020. The program is titled “Houston Flooding: A Vision for 2020 and Beyond.”
Bayou City Initiative Logo
Featured Speaker Charles Irvine
The featured speaker will be Charles Irvine, Court-appointed Co-Lead Counsel of the Addicks/Barker “Upstream” flood case. He will discuss the historic win of the lawsuit led by homeowners who unknowingly bought homes in the flood pool of Addicks and Barkers reservoirs, and then flooded during Harvey.
Attendees will also hear from Bayou City Initiative’s Founder, Jim Blackburn, as he presents his State of the City address, “Two and a Half Years After Harvey.” Blackburn will present an overview of what has been accomplished since Harvey in 2017 and what actions remain to reduce the threat of flooding in Houston and Harris County.
PLEASE NOTE: If you have attended previous meetings, there is a new location: The Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center of Houston.
INFO:
Houston Flooding: A Vision for 2020 and Beyond
DATE: February 19, 2020,12:00 – 2:00pm – LUNCH PROVIDED
LOCATION – NEW: Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center of Houston, 5601 Braeswood Blvd, 77096
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/image-5.png?fit=300%2C300&ssl=1300300adminadmin2020-01-29 15:20:532020-01-29 15:21:03Bayou City Initiative Presents “Houston Flooding: A Vision for 2020 and Beyond
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?
Jim Blackburn, JD, professor of environmental law at Rice and Phil Bedient, PhD., a professor of engineering also at Rice, have just released an important new study called Houston a Year After Harvey: Where We Are and Where We Need to Be . Because of the length, detail, intricate maps and charts, and file size, this is best viewed on something larger than a smartphone.
Written for the Average Adult
Three things immediately become apparent when reviewing this 55-page report. It’s wide ranging in scope. It’s an excellent work of scholarship. And it’s well written; the average adult should be able to understand all the key concepts without difficulty.
Houston A Year After Harvey: Three Major Sections
It’s an excellent summary of what happened during Harvey, how the community is responding, and what still needs to be done – major watershed by major watershed.
The Problems of Obsolete Flood Plain Maps
This paper is organized into three main sections. First, the issues of obsolete 100-year floodplain maps and increasing rainfall are discussed because they are key to fully understanding the current dilemma and shaping alternative concepts for long-term protection. Whether or not you believe in climate change, the case for revising flood maps is pretty compelling based on the math alone. We’ve had five so-called 500-year storms in the last 25 years. Are we just spectacularly unlucky? Or do we need to revisit the assumptions and underlying math?
Any time you try to predict the frequency of rarely observed or unobserved events, such as 500-year storms, you venture way out on a limb. The data on which you base assumptions is thin. Worse, one of the fundamental precepts of extreme value analysis (EVA) is that nothing changes during the 500 years under analysis.
Good luck with that. Five hundred years ago, the U.S., Texas, Houston, developers, gasoline, F150s and sand mining didn’t even exist. As we get more data and update assumptions, flood maps are being redrawn. So are the guidelines which form the basis for different types of development. Instead of raising new homes two feet above the 100 year flood plain, officials are now talking about two feet above the 500-year flood plain.
Issues that Need to Be Addressed Watershed by Watershed
The second part of Houston A Year After Harvey is a geographic overview of the flood issues and potential responses to various watersheds across Harris County.
The discussion of the West Fork of the San Jacinto goes from pages 28-30. It starts with a discussion of sedimentation, where the sediment is coming from and why we need stronger regulation of sand mining.
In regard to sedimentation, the reports also discusses the need for dredging to restore the river’s carrying capacity.
Finally, in regard to the San Jacinto, the report discusses the need to change the operating philosophy for the dams on Lake Conroe and Lake Houston to enable pre-release as a strategy for flood mitigation. This has already happened, they note, with the approval of the TCEQ to temporarily lower the level of Lake Conroe during the peak of hurricane season.
Different Solution Sets for Different Flooding Issues
The third major portion of Houston A Year After Harvey discusses different flood management concepts for three zones of the Houston area that have different flooding issues.
The authors break the county up into three major zones, A, B and C. A stretches from Addicks/Barker to the Katy Prairie. B covers the central part of the county. And C covers coastal areas.
The discussion of Zone B (which includes the Lake Houston and San Jacinto River) includes explanations for many of the projects listed on the Harris County Flood Control District Flood Bond that we are now voting on. See pages 42 through 45.
But don’t stop there. There’s also a great description for how the Ike Dike could work in Zone C.
How All the Pieces of the Flood Bond Fit Together
All in all, Houston A Year After Harvey makes a great case for the flood bond, without ever really setting out to do that. It will help give you a better understanding for how our drainage problems affect the people around us and vice versa.
Houston at the Crossroads: Resilience and Sustainability in the 21st Century examines population growth, economic vitality of the Houston region, the increasing frequency of severe rainfall events, and the ability of agriculture to sequester carbon dioxide in the ground. The basic premise? Houston’s current financial position in the world is at risk if we don’t change.
Blackburn’s white paper begins by tracing the Houston region’s meteoric growth, from about 110,000 in 1900 to 6.4 million people today. This growth, says Blackburn, was enabled by the intersection of several factors and trends. They included the transition to a carbon-based economy in the early 1900s, the presence of plentiful hydrocarbons in the region, and the development of the Port of Houston at about the time the Panama Canal was completed. Conditions were ideal for Houston to rapidly blossom into the world capital of the oil industry.
Changing Trends Put Houston at a New Crossroads
After the year 2000, however, Blackburn says, the complexion of growth began to change, just as it did in the previous century during the transition from horses to automobiles. We are now at another crossroads.
Concerns about the increasing severity and frequency of extreme weather events, such as Tropical Storm Allison, Hurricane Harvey and other recent 500-year storms have been widely linked to increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Concerns about CO2 have encouraged the development of alternative sources of energy, such as wind and solar. These alternative sources compete with oil and gas, the traditional drivers of Houston’s economic growth.
These trends also work together, according to Blackburn, in a way that makes the region less desirable for corporate re-location. Blackburn cites the recent decision by Amazon, which was looking for a second “headquarters” city. Houston did not even make the top 25 list of cities under consideration despite it’s mid-continent location; huge port; and excellent air, rail and highway transportation networks.
At the Crossroads of the Future and the Past: Decision Time
He makes a good point. We must make sure Houston is positioned for the future, not the past, if we want it to remain vital. The rust belt is littered with examples of cities that failed to see change coming. Blackburn also cites examples of cities that have successfully weathered change through history and discusses how they did it.
Blackburn crammed this 23-page white paper full of charts, graphs, maps, and tables that show the nature of the changes around us. He then poses the central question.
How can we capitalize on our assets to ameliorate our liabilities?
His prescriptions for change make this paper well worth reading. They include the way we manage flood plains and green spaces; how we grow and distribute food; and how we can capture the value of ecosystems by allowing land owners to be compensated for storing carbon through agriculture and forestry. Using nature, he says, is the oil industry’s only viable option for closing the carbon loop.
Practical Prescriptions
Blackburn proposes something called a Soil Value Exchange program. It reminds me somewhat of the emissions trading programs that helped reduce air pollution in Southern California. His descriptions of how farmers and ranchers can verify and capitalize on carbon capture represent hope for the future of a city whose economy is based largely on oil.
When you’re scraping muck out of a flooded home, it’s hard to focus on the big picture. It’s also important. Blackburn’s prescriptions are both visionary and practical at the same time. They are keys to economic resilience and sustainability.
