Houston

[xoxoxoBruce]

Lola Bunny says her family is OK.

[DanaC]

That's good to hear.

[glatt]

It's insane. This is a once in a thousand year flood, but at least some of the impact is caused by building practices in Houston.


I was reading up yesterday about the Addicks reservoir in Houston. It's kind of crazy. There are neighborhoods that were built inside the footprint of area potentially held back by the dam. The top of the earthen dam is at about 115 feet of elevation. Just below the dam, the elevation is about 90 feet. Behind the dam, one neighborhood in particular is located at 109 feet of elevation. So when the reservoir filled up yesterday and even with the flood gates open, the water rose to the level of the top of the dam and started spilling over it, that one neighborhood was 6 feet under water inside the reservoir.

This neighborhood, Barkers Branch, is inside the reservoir.

So I dropped into street view to see if maybe the houses there were built on stilts.

nope.


This street is at 109 feet, so the water would be about even with the roof of that truck parked there.

I just have a real hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that they built a neighborhood inside a reservoir.

[glatt]

there is even a map that shows the areas that would flood. This neighborhood was in the lump of yellow/green on the left. Green means it was in the flood zone.

[Griff]

Could we have less foresight?

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by glatt

I just have a real hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that they built a neighborhood inside a reservoir.

There was an entire band of idiots involved there. Think of how many steps/committees/entities that plan had to make it past.

Horrible, horrible decision-making.

[Happy Monkey]

Developers should pay for flood insurance for 20 years.

[Gravdigr]

It is estimated the Addicks and Barker Reservoirs, along with other federal construction projects on Buffalo Bayou and its tributaries, prevent average annual flood damages of $16,372,000[7] to the city of Houston.

~Wiki

How's that working out for ya?

[glatt]

I can't find any pictures of that particular neighborhood being flooded, but this is the airport right next to it and it looks like maybe 3 feet of water yesterday. They are the same elevation.



An airport in a reservoir isn't as egregious to me as a residential neighborhood. Nobody lives at an airport. It's mostly just land.

[glatt]

One frustrating thing for me is that in the vast majority of pictures by the media, they don't identify the location. I get the feeling we just keep seeing the same highway by the river shown over and over again. There is no sense of the scope of this thing from the media coverage. With the rain gone, I'd expect aerial photos of the city showing how far the water stretches.

[glatt]

Good article on the stupid reservoir situation.
https://www.texastribune.org/2017/08...nt-going-fail/

[Flint]

I've had family that lived in Houston (in the past, not currently) who've joked, "Yeah, there's no real city planning here*, they just kept plopping down new construction, willy-nilly, wherever they felt like it."

In the past, we've understood that to mean when it rains heavily, just a normal heavy rain, the streets will flood, in many places high enough that people think they can drive through it, but they can't, and get washed out, car totaled, and have to be rescued. That's a common thing we just live with.

When more, and worse storms keep hitting, it becomes more than an inconvenience.

We've had multiple "hundred year storms" in the last few years, and now this "500" or even "1,000 year" storm, is being treated like an unprecedented anomaly. It's most likely not. Keep your eyes on the skies. And the thermometers. Every year for many years running has been the "hottest year on record" and there have been no breaks in this pattern.

Don't trust the scientists? Stick your head out the window (and pull it out of the sand).


...



* In other words, a market-based, regulation-free Libertarian utopia.

[Happy Monkey]

The thing about regulations is, most of them are only there because at some point, some asshole did the thing they're trying to prevent, and got away with it because there wasn't a rule.

There are also ones put in place to protect entrenched interests from competition, but those usually aren't the ones targeted for removal by deregulators.

[xoxoxoBruce]

My cousin tells there are no building codes in Texas, zoning doesn't exist outside the big cities, and is a joke in them.

[sexobon]

How about the illegal aliens in Houston who had just crossed the river only to find this.