Houston isn't flooded because of its land use planning.

Strong Towns ^ | 30 August 2017 | Daniel Herriges

[blueunicorn6]

I have a friend who lives in the mountains.

Mountains have forest fires.

She paid to have someone come and cut down the trees close to her house.

She swept up all the pine needles.

This is called taking an active role in disaster preparation.

She didn’t go to the county commissioner meetings and talk about global warming.

She went to work.

She didn’t go to the state legislature and talk about immigration matters.

She went to work.

Life is all about opportunity costs.

If the mayor is spending his time on issues that we elect other people to work on, then that is time, effort and money not spent on issues that affect Houston.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

The only purpose of zoning is so lawyers can get a generous cut of all development dollars, just like the legalized mobsters they are.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

That wouldn’t happen. Zoning laws are there to give lawyers a generous cut of all development dollars. Period.

So where do you practice law?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Lawyers aren’t going to care about any of that. They just want you to pay them their cut if you are going to build something.

[BenLurkin]

These work quite well:

[hecticskeptic]

Worse, it's a flood surge pipeline into the heart of the area you want to keep dry.

I can't imagine that this is but a small technical problem that is easily solved. Sheesh... if I can install a one way valve in the plumbing line for my sump pump, I can't imagine that something on a larger scale couldn't be done for a channel.

[deport]

Houston’s devastating flood of 1935 (From 2015 article)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3583097/posts?page=1#1

[MrEdd]

You aren’t supposed to ask any of those questions.

The article is designed to make you conclude that if Huston would somehow force citizens to ride buses or trains and dispense with their bourgeois Gaia destroying cars this flood wouldn’t have happened.

Read it again and submit to the overarching subtext.

[af_vet_rr]

What they need to do is take good long look at not allowing development in areas that everybody knows will flood. The Army never intended people to develop near those reservoirs and in other areas they knew would flood. People toss around terms like "100 year flood plain" and "500 year flood plain" and yet I knew several people who have flooded 2-3 times in the past 5 years, and the odds were that the wouldn't flood.

At the very least, we need to stop bailing out far too many people because of repeated flooding, either through flood insurance (that affects the premiums for the rest of us), or through federal aid. There's far too much development in areas that we know will flood again. Buy them out now, turn those areas into large parks (like the other large parks in Houston intended to help alleviate the flooding).

Even though our Houston-area properties didn't flood (but only by a few feet of one of the bayous, and 5-6 feet by the Brazos), it's too risky and expensive to stick around. Our premiums will go up because plenty did, and plenty more will in the next 5-10 years.

[Charles Martel]

It is possible to devise floodgates to prevent storm surge waters from pushing up those channels - the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed such structures along the eastern New Orleans land bridge (Chef Pass, Lake St. Catherine, Rigolets, etc.) to prevent water from pushing from the Gulf into Lake Pontchartrain.

Big, movable gates (like those in Holland) that would stand open for most of the year, but could be closed within a day if a storm threatened the area. A group of environmentalists sued to stop the project, and tied up the project long enough that the funding was used for other things.

Hey, we can't have aquatic fauna being inconvenienced by man-made barriers that *might* be closed one week out of fifty-two. Engineering - that we can conquer. It's the politics that routinely trips us up.

[Charles Martel]

Tropical cyclones don’t usually make landfall along that part of the California coast, though. It’s more common to see that happen to the south, along the Baja peninsula.

[cgbg]

If the central cities had no significant crime suburban sprawl would be the stuff of science fiction.

The ACLU has more responsibility for suburban sprawl than anyone else.

Safety in your person and property is priceless.

[achilles2000]

It isn’t that bad, and, in any event, it isn’t your decision to make.

[achilles2000]

It isn’t that bad, and, in any event, it isn’t your decision to make.

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

Require the houses flooded now be rebuilt on columns or “stilts”, no exceptions.

[Lorianne]

I agree. And the problem is aggravated by a lot of development in an area (buildings roads parking lots etc) which reduces the lands natural ability to shed water. The water has nowhere to go.

[Lorianne]

You’ve got gravity working for you there.

[Lorianne]

Wut?
Retirement funds is not what this topic is about.

I have posted several articles about retirement funds if you care to post in those.

[grania]

It isn't that bad, and, in any event, it isn't your decision to make

It's one where the tax payer should have an input. We all pay when insurance companies and the feds have to pay for the outcomes of unsustainable construction. We pay with higher taxes and higher insurance costs. We also pay because of the destruction of the environment and when events are more catastrophic than they would've been if construction didn't destroy fragile environments.

[a fool in paradise]

The so-called “smart growth” libs have been tearing down old neighborhoods near downtown (”inside the 610 loop”, and more specifically a few miles from downtown) and replacing a house and yard with 4 or more 3 story townhomes and no grass.

They say that the population density is a must for “sustainability”.

It’s a convenient dodge and pivot.