Galveston Bay on the upper Texas coast is lined with the largest concentration of petro-chemical plants in the Western Hemisphere, if not in the world. Any serious damage to that complex or product interruption would have serious consequences for the nation’s economy and impact the lives of all our citizens. That is why I have chosen to reproduce an important op-ed piece from the Houston Chronicle.
That petro-chemical complex is subject to a destructive storm surge from a major hurricane's direct hit on the Houston-Galveston area. And so are the homes of several million residents. A direct hit by a Category 4 or 5 hurricane could create a storm surge that would result in a high death toll, the destruction of countless homes and businesses, serious damage to the petro-chemical plants, thousands of jobs lost, an increase in property insurance rates for all Americans and an increase in the prices of consumer goods.
A direct hit on the Galveston-Houston area by a Category 4 or 5 hurricane would make the costliest U.S. hurricanes - Katrina ($96 billion), Andrew ($26.5 billion) and Ike ($22 billion) - pale by comparison. It should be noted that Ike made its landfall some miles east of Galveston as a Category 2 hurricane with a Category 5 storm surge. Thus the rotation of the storm put the Houston-Galveston area on the clean side of the hurricane. Had Ike made its landfall at Galveston instead, the storm surge would have resulted in a catastrophic loss of lives and property.
To protect the upper Texas coast from a catastrophic storm surge, a professor from Texas A&M University has proposed extending Galveston’s seawall in both directions together with the construction of Netherlands-like flood gates across the entrance to Galveston Bay and several of the other bays. His proposal has come to be known as ‘The Ike Dike.’
The Ike Dike proposal came under immediate attack by environmentalists. They charged that the Ike Dike would destroy the upper coast’s ecosystem, prevent the migration of marine life between the bays and the Gulf and invite further development. They proposed letting the sand dunes on the barrier islands serve to protect the coast from a storm surge. It seems as though the econuts are much more concerned about the ecosystem than they are about a catastrophic loss of lives,property and jobs.
The environmentalists say that the petro-chemical plants, homes and businesses should never have been developed in the storm surge-prone areas of the Gulf coast. And you know, they’re absolutely right. But the reality is that those plants, homes and businesses are now in place there and can’t just be abandoned to the ravages of a hurricane.
Bill King, a highly regarded former two-term mayor of Kemah, has contributed a number of op-eds to the Chronicle. Because his views did not mesh with those of the left-wing, an EX-friend who calls me a Nazi (see "Extremist and Racist Old Man?" 7-15-10) took to calling King a ‘right-wing nut.’ When you read the following op-ed piece you will see that King is a very reasonable and responsible concerned citizen and in no way a right-wing nut.
IT’S TIME TO COORDINATE STORM MITIGATION EFFORTS
The extremists on either side of the Ike Dike issue should be ignored while we formulate plans for a regional surge protection system
By Bill King
Houston Chronicle
July 29, 2010
Unfortunately public debates tend to devolve into discussions about the most extreme positions. So it is becoming with the pubic conversation about the so-called Ike Dike. Increasingly, the choices are being presented as building a Galveston-Seawall- type structure along the entire upper Texas coast or "retreating" out of the surge zone. Both of these extreme alternatives are absurd on their face.
Let me start with the notion that we are going to retreat out of the hurricane surge zone. Typically this idea is presented with the appealing argument that environmentally sensitive areas like Bolivar and the west end of Galveston Island are really not suitable for intensive development. While that may be the case and while there may be a case for restricting development in such areas, these seaside areas represent a tiny fraction of the hurricane surge zone area.
The surge zone for a major hurricane covers all of Galveston County, about 65 percent of Brazoria County and about 20 percent of Harris County. Included in the zone are the homes of about 1 million people, thousands of businesses, hundreds of schools and churches and dozens of hospitals and nursing homes. Also located in the zone are such critical infrastructures as the Johnson Space Center, some of the largest petrochemical plants in the world, hundreds of wastewater treatment plants, power-generating plants and a critical freshwater reservoir, just to name a few. We have literally trillions of dollars invested already in the surge zone and it represents thousands of jobs.
Building all of this on a flat coastal plain may not have been the best idea, but it is done. The idea that we as a community are going to retreat from these investments is not even worthy of a serious discussion. And if we continue to leave these investments unprotected we risk an economic blow from which the region might never recover. It is worth remembering that Galveston never returned to her pre-1900 storm glory.
It is equally absurd to imagine we are going to build a 17-foot concrete wall along the entire upper coast. First, it would be prohibitively expensive. But more importantly, the Galveston Seawall is an early 20th century technology. Much has been learned about flood protection and coastal geology since 1900, especially in the integration of natural barriers as design elements. The Dutch, for example, rely on massive sand dunes for much of their coastal protection system. Any structural components of a storm surge protection system built in the 21st century are going to look much different than the Galveston Seawall and will be much more environmentally sensitive.
The only real choices we have are whether we are going to have regionally coordinated efforts to mitigate the effects of a hurricane surge or ad hoc protection efforts by individual communities, homeowners and businesses. If we allow the latter to happen it will be massively more expensive, leave many areas unprotected and likely have many collateral adverse impacts, including potentially severe environmental impacts. And if there is not a regionally coordinated effort, individual hardening will be the default result.
There are many other cities and countries around the world that are facing similar problems, including Venice, New York, St. Petersburg, London and, of course, the Netherlands. None of these places are sitting back and letting their flood control proceed on an ad hoc basis. All are engaged in regional planning and international cooperation. In fact, an international association has recently been formed for this purpose (see http://www.networkbar riermanagers.com).
This is a time that we need to ignore the fringe voices and concentrate on the real problem at hand. Over the last century, we have suffered massive losses from hurricanes about every 20 years. Each time, the losses have been larger and the flood waters higher. With coastal subsidence and the sea level rising, the situation is likely only to get worse. Let's not wait until we have another 1900 storm disaster to decide that we need to do something.
__King, a frequent contributor to Outlook, was one of the incorporators of the Gulf Coast Community Protection and Recovery District and served on a governor's committee that recommended its creation.
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