Texas officials adopted their first-ever statewide flood plan Thursday, recommending $54.5 billion worth of strategies and studies to protect the 1 in 6 Texans who live or work in flood hazard areas.
Complete Story
08/20/2024
Texas Adopts First Statewide Flood Plan. Here's What to Know.
Texas adopts first statewide flood plan. Here's what to know.
Houston Chronicle |
The delayed "Ike Dike," a series of gates, floodwalls and dunes proposed to protect the Houston-Galveston region from storm surge, ranked first on the state’s final list of flood mitigation projects. It also accounted for nearly half of the plan’s budget.
The full sum dwarfed typical flood prevention investments made by state lawmakers, which totaled about $1 billion in the last legislative session.
More than 3,000 of the plan's 4,609 recommendations were to fund research that will evaluate new solutions, suggesting the strategies' ultimate costs will be much higher.
"The intent is that it will be funded by any and all possible sources, not just by the state," said Reem Zoun, who leads the Texas Water Development Board's Flood Planning Division and oversaw the planning process.
Here's what to know about the flood control plan and why it matters to Houston:
What is the purpose of Texas' new flood plan?
Zoun said a statewide plan was crucial even without the funds to support all projects that emerged. Many Texas regions previously had no detailed hazard mapping or strategy to prioritize flood control projects, in spite of the state's long history of flooding. While the Houston area does have better data on its own flood risks and planning processes, many local mitigation strategies have never been fully funded.
Priority projects could continue to struggle with funding, though. The final plan itself said flood infrastructure is often underfunded and needs public assistance because it does not generate direct revenue and "in some cases, those entities incurring the cost of flood mitigation measures are not the same entities that realize the benefits."
The Texas Water Development Board ranked project proposals submitted in 15 regional plans based on their impacts during 100-year floods. The Legislature, which ordered the plan, is expected to use those recommendations during the next legislative session.
What's the public reaction to Texas' flood control plan?
The planning effort was met with praise from community members and local officials who attended the Texas Water Development Board meeting Thursday to comment before the board's approval.
"This plan has brought a lot of what we have been advocating in the past years," said Frances Acuna, one of over 350 volunteers who worked on the regional flood plans assembled by local authorities and residents.
"Because of increased development, old infrastructure doesn't have the capacity to hold the water," Acuna said, adding that the process had given hope to communities that have been ravaged by flooding.
Zoun, in her presentation to the board ahead of Thursday's unanimous adoption vote, said the long-term impact of the effort would "no doubt reduce the risk and impact of flooding and ease suffering," even though it could not change past disasters.
What was the climate change controversy over the draft?
The plan drew public scrutiny earlier this summer for leaving out the term "climate change" and failing to factor in modeling that could predict how rising sea levels or future rainfall would affect flood zones.
Cyrus Reed, conservation director for the Sierra Club in Texas and one of the commenters at an open hearing on the strategy, said at the time that "it's a very imperfect plan, not conservative enough in terms of protecting people."
Reed and other Texans who raised concerns made clear that there was little opposition to statewide flood planning itself, which the Legislature kicked off after Hurricane Harvey killed dozens of people in the Houston area and caused an estimated $125 billion in damage.
Zoun said the agency is working now on "future condition" mapping before the next planning cycle, which will help regions predict how weather and development will alter flood patterns.
What are 100-year and 500-year floods?
When Hurricane Harvey drowned the Houston area for days on end in 2017, the storm filled places that had less than a 0.2% chance of inundation in a given year according to federal flood maps. It was named a "500-year flood."
While the destruction it wreaked was anomalous, Harvey was not the first 500-year flood in half a millennium. It was the third in three years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whose research on the uptick in flooding kicked off a new federal mapping project for Harris County that should be released by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in 2025.
Without accounting for new adjustments, floods that creep up into the region’s 100-year flood plains are already considered five times more likely than 500-year floods, with a 1% chance of occurring every year.
Why can flood plain maps be misleading?
By definition, 500-year and 100-year flood plains consider the statistical likelihood of an event by looking at the past rather than modeling future changes. In Texas, it appears clear to many residents that the future will look different.
“Flooding is getting worse. It has always been a part of our life, but it is increasingly being driven by climate change,” said Jennifer Walker, the director of the Texas Coast and Water Program for the National Wildlife Federation.
Even with accurate predictions, "the term '100-year flood' is misleading," according to the Harris County Engineering Department. Homes in the area's 100-year flood plain have at least a 26% chance of filling with water over the course of a 30-year mortgage. In the past three decades, many have flooded multiple times.
What is next for the state's flood planning?
The Texas Water Development Board will submit the flood plan to the Legislature on Sept. 1. Lawmakers are expected to consider the agency's recommendations when making funding decisions for flood mitigation strategies.
The plan also made five direct legislative recommendations, distilled from hundreds proposed in the 15 regional strategies. It recommended the state set up ongoing flood mitigation funding, establish targeted assistance for remote or disadvantaged communities, expand funding to mitigate low water crossings, set up regional early warning systems and develop a levee safety program.
The board was mandated by law to create a plan as a "guide to state and local flood control policy," but its advice is not binding: Elected officials at the state level retain control of which suggestions they will put into practice.
The agency's own flood work did not end with the finalized plan. From now on, it will assemble an update every five years.
This article originally appeared in the Houston Chronicle.
