Houston floods show risks of ignoring science and letting developers run rampant | Hacker News Reader

Houston floods show risks of ignoring science and letting developers run rampant

qz.com

48 pointskafkaesq52 comments

The whole thing gets crazy when you realize the federal government was basically subsidizing development in these high risk flood areas. The federal flood insurance rates were not properly evaluating the risk to insure these areas. They were using older flood maps which don't account for changes in urban sprawl and global warming

https://www.vox.com/2017/8/26/16208230/hurricane-harvey-floo...

You may be correct about the subsidies. I don't know enough about it. What I do know is a 1-3% increase in insurance premiums wouldn't have changed the behavior of home buyers here. All along I thought my house was in a 100 year flood plain (plane?). This week I found out it's not even in a 500 year flood plain.

I'm certainly no expert

My back of napkin math says they are $48k short per household.

But ya, Harvey would have been devastating regardless of past insurance policy pricing.

v interesting, from another article:

> The insurance must be bought by homeowners with federally-backed mortgages living in the most vulnerable areas, called Special Flood Hazard Zones. ... People in those areas and near them have complained for years that the premiums are too high, though they would be much higher still if not subsidized by the federal government.

So on one hand the subsidies were way too much, on the other hand it's still not enough for more (than a handful of) people to afford it.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/30/about-80-percent-of-hurrican...

Yes pouring concrete damn near anywhere along the gulf coast is destroying a wetland area. You caught us red handed. Guess how much difference it would have made if the Houston area didn't have a single cubic yard of concrete. We got a fuck ton of rain. Who the fuck are these people?

Developers "run rampant"? Really let's have an in depth look at how our understanding of storm water dentition and runoff has evolved over the past 50 years of explosive growth here. Let's analyze building codes and how they've evolved here. Nah, let's just use this as a stick to beat our pet issue with.

We've had three 500 floods in 12 years.

Seriously. Fuck off. Everybody wants to project their pet issue onto us. These people don't care what's actually going on here, what our actually challenges are and what we've been trying to do about it for the past 50 fucking years.

"These people" cannot comprehend what 3 feet of rain does to a city, because nothing like this has happened in recent history.

I was told in the Netherlands they have large areas designated to be flooded in case of any emergency. People still live there, but know that they are in the flood zone. I can't find a map of this at the moment though.

Great idea!

I would like to see what happens to their dyke system when 3 trillion gallons of water pours in. Don't think it would end well.

I think you mean dike. You may still be able to edit it.

Probably

Using this storm as an opportunity to promote your pet belief is in amazingly bad taste.

The least the author could have done is waited until all the bodies were identified.

I tend to disagree. This is the moment in which people are most likely to read and perhaps even listen. It's amazing how fast people want to and will forget about it if they weren't directly impacted. This is when it is most relevant.

Except these aren't particularly valid issues. Even with a pristine Katy prairie Harvey would still have caused total mayhem. 800 year floods are an insurance problem not a zoning problem.

It's completely inappropriate to limit talk of global warming when a hurricane just hit.

Now is the time to make sure people understand that this is due to global warming.

/s/due to/worsened by/

I'm not sure why this was flagged specifically but changing the title to say "Real Estate Developers" might help.

Should we restrict human expansion and destruction of coastal wetlands? Is it smart to live in a place where flooding is the norm, and it's costs must continually be subsidized by local, state and federal government? Is it fair to spend federal dollars necessary to rebuild Houston?

These are interesting questions - but the fact is that 20-50 inches of rain fell along the Texas coast the past 4 days. No amount of eco circle jerk or voting is ever going to prevent a disaster like this. Even the article says the amount of water shed run off affected by expansion is a drop in the bucket compared to the total amount of rainfall Harvey will produce. This did not just affect Houston either - but multiple counties along the Texas coast all the way to Louisiana.

Should we not rebuild San Francisco when the next big earthquake hits? Should we not rebuild New Jersey or New Orleans when they get hit by another hurricane? Where do we draw the line on rebuilding large cities after natural disasters?

I don't have good answers here - we are all still trying to recover in Houston at this point. Like Angersock said, the sooner we recover the better for people like QAPereo. We are pioneers in Houston - space, heart surgery, oil and gas to name a few - why not rebuild?

None of that. It just means being smart about city planning like the Netherlands.

Hurricanes don't affect the Netherlands. No amount of planning can prevent devastation from a storm that drops three feet of water in your front yard.

You seem uniformed about what is going on here. This hurricane was bigger than Rita, Katrina, Sandy - and those were real beasts. Maybe you are uninformed because national news coverage of this storm is limited compared to others like it - there have been few deaths because as Texans we have done a damn good job dealing with it so far.

It's not all or nothing, it's a continuum. Decisions about city planning can make things better or worse. There were things done wrong that made it worse.

For example, building homes in a reservoir [1] seems like an obvious bad idea. Do you really want to defend that?

[1] https://plus.google.com/+BrianSlesinsky/posts/GwxF2yM3QmC

It is a continuum, and we are way to the right on a log scale in terms of event intensity.

I agree we can do certain things like require people to have flood insurance.

Neat reference, but you are misquoting it. The homes are not built in a resevoir. They are built in a 100 year flood plain artificially created by earthen dams designed to protect the city.

The only reason it was designated a "100 year" flood plain was because of faulty government standards. We're only way to the right on a log scale because that scale massively underestimated 0 to 1.

Isn't that what a reservoir is? You build a dam and everything behind it floods. (Typically anyone living there already gets bought out.)

Apparently not all the land behind the dam was bought when it was vacant, people built houses there, therefore these reservoirs can't be allowed to fill all the way during the storm, and they have to release water sooner than they would have otherwise.

(Or at least that's what ProPublica seems to be saying. Other news reports say differently.)

Yes let's blame the floods on lack of zoning regulations. Not a hurricane. Houston is too affordable, needs to be gentrified and regulated so no one can afford to live there like San Francisco.

If our species were slightly better than a self-important ape that wears pants, we'd:

    a. give everyone with property damage ~$20,000
    b. void their mortgage or lease

So now they can afford to relocate, or they have some money to start rebuilding, they have no debt and the banks who decided to not require flood insurance can go choke on their bad decision and risk assessment.

That's cheaper than the inevitable $120+ billion dollar bailout that's on the way. And it would help people make the saner choice which is to migrate out of Houston which gets flooded in some way or another pretty much every year, even with wet lands in place.

And maybe the no longer bailed out banks will require, across the board, flood insurance. Which should match the actual risk of future floods.

As a resident Houston for 25 years, I can count on one hand the number of times flooding has caused anything but minor inconveniences to the city as a whole. There will always be a slightly inflated risk pool here but it's not nearly as bad as you make it sound.

And I will gladly go on record as willing to subsidize 800 year floods in any part of the world, the inevitable Big One in California, the next Mt St Helens, and so on. Expecting the market to manage black swans is unrealistic.

Harris County Flood Control District claims three 500 year floods the past three years. That this is by far the worst of the three, doesn't make 500 year floods in Houston "black swan" events. Their own web site makes it sound worse than I am. https://www.hcfcd.org/flooding-floodplains/harris-countys-fl...

Those aren't "claims", those are based on the historical record of the floodplain here. And those floods are a reflection of huge weather events not poor planning on the city's part.

And that site is only talking about the typical spot flooding that Houston is prone to which causes (again) a slightly inflated risk pool.

You're way overstating your case here.

And yes, 3 500 year floods in 3 years qualifies as a black swan. There are simply no models that predicted this.

It shows not only the dangers of ignoring science but of promoting an irrational alternative in its stead. Like a war, a hurricane is something you cannot pretend is not happening; it's a true test of your reality versus reality, and in places like Texas and Louisiana they've been found wanting. People are free in this country to believe whatever they want, and those same people are free to vote. What they are not free from are the consequences of holding those beliefs and casting those votes.

What I believe is that my city came together in a time of great stress and has been prevailing.

What I believe is that my city's people decided that it was more important to have growth and to bounce back than to limit itself in the face of known weather.

What I believe is that we are richer and more diverse because of the lack of zoning and because of aggressive (if irresponsible) development, and that more people had better lives than would have if we'd said "oh well i guess we should give up".

What I believe is that none of the people who haven't lived here for years have much useful to say that isn't just virtue signalling and apocalyptic rubbernecking.

And lastly, calling our people irrational while you enjoy the fruit of our labors in the form of cheap gasoline, cheap imports, and good cancer care I believe is extremely tacky.

All of your beliefs are fine, but your city still drowned, and will again with increasing frequency. As a species, we need to learn to start discussing these issues instead of always reacting to them after the fact. The pepole who are going to suffer most are the ones who do what you do, and believe uber alles, because while it's your human right, nature just doesn't care at all.

We'll be fine in six months, and humming along in another six.

You might be, many others will remain devastated.

At how much cost in emergency aid from elsewhere?

After coastal Texas gets $120+ billion courtesy of the Federal government.

If this was a free market state's rights kinda program, Texas should raise the cost of it's exports and fund this rebuild entirely on its own.

After every household in America ponies up $1000 to rebuild your infinite spreading plane of HEB parking lots. You're welcome in advance, mr. bootstraps.

HEB is awesome though. And so is Bucy's. Thanks in advance.

OK now how much of my money would you like me to pay to you to make sure that you are fine?

As a resident of New Orleans, I'd like to know your ideas about how to deal with subsidence?

I grew up in Houston, all my family is there still, and I agree with this article as well as the OP. Argue the man on his points, not your feelings.

85% of Harris county residents do not have flood insurance. Mortgage companies colluded with homeowners, land lords, and politicians to complain about big government regulations making people's homes too expensive by requiring it.

And now here are those mortgage companies and homeowners and landlords asking to be bailed out, to rebuild, to change no behavior.

This is worse than just paying people to sit on the sofa. That's cheap compared to this. At least they spend that money and it involves no asset destruction. Houston is basically asking the country to refund bad choices, transfer wealth back into physical assets located in coastal Texas, which will inevitably be destroyed again at some point in the future.

shrug

Fine. But I think flood insurance should be mandatory. And it should be at cost (no profit). But it should not be subsidized. And I think that's the same for any coastal area. And for people who live in fire prone forest areas.

But I will bet money that Ted Cruz and Texas politicians will be begging for more money than Katrina. And the next time there's a hurricane not in Texas they'll all bitch and moan about how most of that money is pork, and then vote against it just like they did with hurricane Sandy.

Would you please not post rants like this to HN, regardless of how tacky other people are?

Again, no need to be rude in getting your point across.

Please don't post supercilious rants to HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That's a pretty insulting way of complaining about tone.

"Après moi le déluge! is the watchword of every capitalist."

--Karl Marx

Hilarious to learn this week that the federal government eats a net loss while subsidizing correlated flood risk.

Isn't this exactly what Google did a month ago? </s>

(I know, I know, different type of developers. But still. :P

Yes, we should make sure everything is totally proof from any possible disaster, no matter how unlikely or how little economic sense it makes. For example, we should make sure cities can survive not only 500 year floods, like in Houston, but 1 million year floods and direct asteroid strikes up to 1km in diameter. However, I think even when we do this, eventually a city will be hit by a 2km diameter asteroid, and qz.com will blame developers.

Why are there adults that make slippery-slope arguments?

It's not a slippery slope argument at all.. My point is that there is some optimal amount of investment in disaster preparedness, and if you make that optimal investment, and despite that a disaster overwhelms you, you still acted rationally and optimally. Investing more than is optimal is stupid.

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