Floods Are Increasingly Common. Our Water Infrastructure Is Unprepared.

Governing.com ^ | July 9, 2025 | Carl Smith

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Governments can’t change the weather, but they can invest in infrastructure that is better able to handle it.

A 2024 report from the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Value of Water Campaign estimated that the country is billions of dollars short in investments needed to update water infrastructure for 21st-century needs, including a new normal of extreme rainfall events.

You can see strong bipartisan support for trying to prevent flooding and address flooding among local and county elected officials. South Carolina just passed funding to expand data collection related to flooding and resilience. They passed about $1 million for that effort and another $5 million to coordinate resilience planning across watersheds.

One thing that gives me the sense that we might be able to succeed in that is we have voices across the political spectrum starting to speak up more about resilience as a strategy. If you're talking about the Texas Hill Country, the human toll is the thing that we're most concerned about.

But there are voices primarily in the business of supporting the economy who also see resilience as a really good investment. In 2025, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce increased its estimate of how much pre-disaster resilience funding saves in economic losses. A common rule of thumb used to be that each dollar spent before a disaster saves you six afterward. Their research found that it actually saves $13.

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TOPICS: Weather
KEYWORDS: infrastructure

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Not just flooding prep, but what will it take for airports across the country to be updated and look less befitting of a 3rd world country, subways and public transit in NYC and other major cities to be sanitary at basic and brought into the 21st Century… crumbling bridges, roads, and highways to be repaired and restored across the United States?

[crusher2013]

“Governments can’t change the weather”

Ha Ha Ha, sure they can. Just give them more money...

Global Warming...

Do I need to put the /s tag..

[Macoozie]

” American Society of Civil Engineers and the Value of Water Campaign”

Gee, ya think their gonna make a few bucks with all the water consumin’ going on?

Nah.
Must be real Altruists.
Only working for the Common Good.

[silent majority rising]

We cannot eliminate natural disasters. We can only mitigate them in cost effective ways. One fallacy of the New Green Scam was that spending = solutions. It does not.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

WHAT? The author isn’t calling for a hundred trillion dollars to change the climate? He’s being eminently sensible and calling for improved infrastructure instead? What is with this uncommon common sense? For shame!

[Alas Babylon!]

Well, there are actually benefits to global warming. Increased CO2 really helps plants. The UN estimates green growth across the globe is up 20% since the 1960s.

Also, a warmer Earth is a wetter Earth. Warm air hold more water vapor than cold air. Warm air causes more evaporation. Atmospheric evaporation increases clouds, which increase rainfall. Although increased global cloud cover will lead to less solar radiation warming the Earth, clouds reflect that heat back up into space, and then Earth cools a little.

It’s God’s perfect climate balancing act!

[GMMC0987]

Are floods increasing or are we developing flood prone areas?

[FlingWingFlyer]

They are not anymore “increasingly common” than they were centuries ago. It’s just people didn’t know about them before because they didn’t live there. The brain defects of the Bidenskyy adminstration imported two New Yawk Cities and 1 Los Angeles load of slave laborers to vote for the Party of Death and put them where these things used to hit but nobody was around to know about it. We live in flood plains now.

[kaktuskid]

More people living in flood prone areas.

[Tell It Right]

No. The article has “...estimated that the country is billions of dollars short in investments needed to update water infrastructure for 21st-century needs, including a new normal of extreme rainfall events...”. In other words, more money is needed cuz of climate change BS.

[MMusson]

More asphalt and cement and less gras and trees

[SecondAmendment]

Methinks the real issue is massive immigration making it impossible for infrastructure improvements to keep up.

We need a 50 year moratorium on all immigration, no student visas, no H1Bs, nothing

[daku]

If we can pump oil across continents to where it needs to go to be refined, couldn’t habitually flood ravaged areas empty to habitually dry and desolate areas ?

[Robert DeLong]

REVEALED: Austin fire chief who denied resources ahead of Texas flooding prioritized 'increasing diversity'

[desertsolitaire]

Kind of like in California where certain areas have land at sky high prices so building is occurring in locations that would at one time not been considered buildable or desirable due to terrain, fire risk, mud slide risk, flooding risk, etc.

[Wuli]

Floods are Increasingly Common

There, I fixed the title.

[pas]

I thought droughts were increasingly common.

[Crusher138]

Funny...no data to support their claim.

How many more floods have we had?

[Miami Rebel]

Have you actually been to New York recently?

Last August I boarded an Amtrak to Florida at the new Daniel Moynihan terminal. It is gorgeous.

Thursday, I flew into Laguardia, which is now modern and pleasant (nicer than Miami International.) It had been the worst airport I’d ever experienced. We drove from there to New Jersey. Most of stretch through Manhattan has been repaved.

[caww]

It rained fast and hard......

Flash Flood “watches” go out with a purpose as do Flash flood “warnings”......
We get them here fairly often and the community is aware of the areas prone to flooding IF it happens at all.

So flooding can happen when it rains.....storms occur with that risk....i’s always been that way and will be so in the future.