ABOVE THE WATER LINE

By Sally Bethea

Bethea is the retired executive director

highly dramatic, lesson of what can happen downstream when a natural landscape is paved: the memory of my father trying to pull logs from the stream – so that they did not obstruct the flow and flood our home –remains vivid.

I can hardly imagine the fear and horror experienced by the thousands of flood victims in Texas and Florida from the recent hurricanes: acts of nature whose impact was immeasurably worse because of what has been called “a massive engineering and government failure”.

According to the Dallas Morning News , more than two decades ago, county officials predicted with “chilling accuracy” just how devastating a storm like Harvey would be for Houston. In a 1996 report, engineers for the Harris County Flood Control District concluded the area’s reservoir system was severely insufficient and imperiled thousands of properties.

The authors determined that storms far smaller than Harvey could wreck a large portion of the city and its western suburbs. They knew which neighborhoods would flood and why, and where the most damage would occur.

The engineers proposed a $400 million fix: constructing a massive underground conduit that would carry water out of the reservoirs and into the Houston Ship Channel more quickly. Interstate reconstruction, ongoing at the time, provided a perfect opportunity to combine both projects.

Had the report’s recommendations been heeded, the catastrophic flooding that struck Houston might have spared thousands of homes from floodwaters. Instead, the report got filed away and was forgotten. Government leaders ignored its conclusion: do nothing and accept the risk of flooding. They claimed at the time, and more recently, that the fix was too expensive and that the flood conduit couldn’t be built without federal dollars which they said were unavailable.

Yet, these local growth-at-anycost boosters continued to permit development in flood-prone areas and filled wetlands for thousands of so-called “affordable” houses. The biggest city in the country without zoning bet that it could beat Mother Nature with Texasstyle bravado, apparently assuming that the federal government (you and I) would pick up the tab for any catastrophe.

Of course, no amount of money can make up for loss of life or the loss of poorly uninsured homes and businesses. Lives are ruined by such events.

Ten years ago, Houston officials attempted to ban development in areas with a high risk of flooding. Developers sued and the policy was weakened. Officials tried putting up gauges in lowlying areas, but pressure from real estate interests had them removed.

How can it possibly be worth putting people’s lives and property at risk to make more money in the short term? Are we that greedy? Are we incapable of acknowledging the cumulative impacts of thousands of poor decisions and the associated risks?

American writer Upton Sinclair said it best: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Atlanta has created important initiatives to make the city sustainable and resilient, but the pressure on public officials remains strong to allow building in marginal areas: floodplains, stream buffers and wetlands.

In the 1950s, there was minimal understanding of how watersheds work in urban settings and the term climate change had not yet been invented. Today, we don’t have such excuses; we know what is coming and we better plan for it – or plan to assign blame and liability for recovery.

Eco Briefs

The Atlanta City Council authorized the purchase of 6.2 acres of forested land located at 770 Shadowridge Drive in East Atlanta. In November 2016, the council approved legislation authorizing the city to procure privately-owned afforested property containing 80 percent or more canopy cover, a minimum forestation standard of 1,000 DBH (Diameter at breast height) inches and/or a minimum of 50 mature trees per acre. “We have to do all that we can, not only to preserve, but to also increase our existing tree canopy,” said District 5 Councilmember Natalyn Archibong. Atlanta’s tree canopy covers almost half of the city – 47.9 percent – according to an assessment released in 2014 by the Atlanta Tree Conservation Commission and Georgia Tech.

Wells Fargo has given a grant to the Piedmont Park Conservancy to help the organization expand its field trip program. In 2016, the Conservancy saw a 175 percent increase in field trip attendance resulting in 2,500 students from 38 organizations. The Conservancy hopes to serve 50 percent more – an additional 1,250 – students during the school year.