{"id":134471,"date":"2017-08-27T23:17:19","date_gmt":"2017-08-28T05:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=134471"},"modified":"2017-08-28T07:16:31","modified_gmt":"2017-08-28T13:16:31","slug":"houston-keeps-flooding-not-going-get-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/27\/houston-keeps-flooding-not-going-get-better.html","title":{"rendered":"Houston keeps flooding. And it’s not going to get better."},"content":{"rendered":"

People always talk about how crazy it is that folk still build near the Mississippi and other major rivers, or along coastlines that are subject to storm surges and the like.<\/p>\n

Meet Houston.<\/p>\n

This very cool interactive report<\/a> was published last December, and it basically paints a damning picture of politicians, public, and developers who …<\/p>\n

… don’t believe that the increasing number of storm and flood events are a sign of the future (let alone that climate change is making things worse), and therefore don’t have to be planned for.<\/p>\n

… think that paving over increasing amounts of land, causing water to simply run off downhill to the next set of houses and businesses, is a needful sacrifice in the cause of “economic growth.”<\/p>\n

… believe that developing housing tracts and businesses in known flood plains or right up against reservoir basins, is not only a fine and profitable idea, not only aligned with American ideals of entrepreneurship and profit, but is their God-given Constitutional Right,<\/i> so that they’ll sue anyone before they let communist concepts like “zoning” or “watr retention requirements” or “developer fees” or “taxes” get in the way of their doing so.<\/p>\n

… if they actually do think there may be some problem, believe that a few simple widenings of existing flood control channels, or maybe adding another flood reservoir, somewhere, some time in the future, paid for by someone else (certainly not anyone who’s going to raise taxes to do so) will take care of the problem in plenty of time, even if all the development activity continues unabated.<\/p>\n

This isn’t true of everyone in the area, but it seems to be true of enough of them that the problem just keeps getting worse, and worse.<\/p>\n

Which makes the hypocrisy of Texas politicians who snorted, scoffed, and opposed disaster relief to places like the NY\/NJ area after Superstorm Sandy, but now are begging for help for Houston and related environs, even bigger hypocrites than might be supposed. Because while the immediate need is very real, to a very large degree (even in the face of an incredible storm like Harvey) it’s a long-developing, long-term problem that has local, very human causes — and apparently little interest or will to solve.<\/p>\n


\n
\n<\/a>
\nWhen Climate Change Meets Sprawl: Why Houston’s \u2018Once-In-A-Lifetime’ Floods Keep Happening<\/a><\/span>
\nUnchecked development remains a priority in the famously un-zoned city, creating short-term economic gains for some, but long term flood risk for everyone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

View on Google+<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People always talk about how crazy it is that folk still build near the Mississippi and other major rivers, or along coastlines that are subject to storm surges and the like. Meet Houston. This very cool interactive report was published last December, and it basically paints a damning picture of politicians, public, and developers who … Continue reading “Houston keeps flooding. And it’s not going to get better.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106,35,748,358,385,376],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-plusposts","category-big-business","category-weather-and-climate-change","category-poor-citizenship","category-safety","category-taxing-spending"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/unnamed-11.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":42113,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/21\/moving-the-climate-change-debate-from-if-to-who-pays.html","url_meta":{"origin":134471,"position":0},"title":"Moving the climate change debate from "if" to "who pays"","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 21-May-14 7:47am","format":false,"excerpt":"Moving the climate change debate from \"if\" to \"who pays\"Farmers Insurance is suing a number of Chicago area municipalities for failing to plan and upgrade infrastructure appropriately in the face of extreme weather associated with climate change -- in this case a major storm that caused sewer and stormwater drain\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":134469,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/27\/houston-related-memes-ive-seen-today.html","url_meta":{"origin":134471,"position":1},"title":"Houston-related memes I’ve seen today","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 27-Aug-17 8:38pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Not to take away from the devastation and human suffering going on there -- but humans often cope with horror through humor, and these mostly work as commentary around the disaster going on in Texas right now. (I certainly encourage looking for opportunities to send assistance to folk as the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/hurricane%2Bgluten%2Bfree.PNGimgmax%3D660.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/hurricane%2Bgluten%2Bfree.PNGimgmax%3D660.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/hurricane%2Bgluten%2Bfree.PNGimgmax%3D660.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":132594,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/20\/in-case-youre-still-wondering-what-trump-thinks-about-climate-change.html","url_meta":{"origin":134471,"position":2},"title":"In case you're still wondering what Trump thinks about climate change","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 20-Jan-17 12:17pm","format":false,"excerpt":"As of Noon today, all reference to climate change and global warming vanished from the official White House web pages. The only mention of \"climate\" is a vow to boost US hydrocarbon extraction by \"eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5960,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/06\/23\/thats_not_dayli.html","url_meta":{"origin":134471,"position":3},"title":"That’s not daylight …","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 23-Jun-04 9:17am","format":false,"excerpt":"Man takes photos of lightning storm. Storm decides to reciprocate with lightning strike in his back yard. Man gets photo without realizing it. (via BoingBoing)...","rel":"","context":"In "Climate Change \/ Weather \/ Disasters"","block_context":{"text":"Climate Change \/ Weather \/ Disasters","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/science\/weather-and-climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"lightning_tree_062104.jpg","src":"\/blog\/images\/lightning_tree_062104.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":38592,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/08\/29\/the-climate-name-change.html","url_meta":{"origin":134471,"position":4},"title":"The Climate Name Change","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 29-Aug-13 12:35pm","format":false,"excerpt":"HA!Obvious caveats (1) I don't actually support this, for a variety of peripheral reasons, and (2) any given hurricane cannot be attributed to climate change, though tends in storm intensity and hurricanes do show an association.But, HA!Reshared post from +Les JenkinsI think this is a great idea and I fully\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":130738,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/23\/climate-change-action-for-me-but-not-for-thee.html","url_meta":{"origin":134471,"position":5},"title":"Climate Change Action for Me but not for Thee","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 23-May-16 9:39pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Donald Trump has railed against climate change, global warming, rising sea levels, and all that other stuff, and has continued to do so to rousing applause at his rallies and twitter stream. At the same time, though, his new golf course in Ireland is applying to the authorities to construct\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134483,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134471\/revisions\/134483"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}