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David Stockman: ‘Now Comes The Black Swan With An Orange-Colored Hue’
By David Stockman as originally published on Contra Corner and reprinted here with permission
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The Houston Ship Channel caused Irma flooding? Absolutely ridiculous. Harvey (not Irma) caused a one in five hundred year rain event. The ship channel is vulnerable to storm surge and needs significant spending do reduce vulnerability. Harvey was an inland flood event and the channel didn’t cause flooding. Lack of federal spending on Harris dams, floodways, and lax zoning made the situation much worse. Harvey is a textbook example of US underfunding of infrastructure.
” After all, having spent a lifetime building stuff with borrowed money, ” and often NOT PAYING IT BACK.
Agree with Jamal James comment. Houston hurricane was Harvey and the issue was with the dams/reserviors north and west of the city that couldnt contain the excessive rainfall (most ever in Continental U.S….) I agree with the premise though that more should be managed locally where the pros/cons are more tangible and impacts of both infrastructure and taxes can be felt by citizens. Harvey is a good example – do you rebuild the reserviors to withstand a record breaking rainfall in the future or do you treat it as a statistical one off event (the previous two Houston floods were from bayous overflowing banks but not related to the reservoirs in those cases). My guess is that if infrastructure vs taxation decision is made localling in Harris and neighboring counties the citizens would’t undertake an upgrade that can handle 100% of storms but if paid for federally and with costs spread nationally that’s a real possiblity…