I never officially lived in Houston, but I spent roughly two years residing there, one summer at a time. When I was a wee lad (back in the Stone Age), our widowed dad used to ship us down from Arkansas to stay with our aunt, uncle and cousins just about every summer. Back then, a heavy rainstorm would leave a few inches of water on the street for a couple of hours, and my brother, sister and cousin would have a blast riding Schwinns through it.
But this is serious business. Looks like my aunt and uncle’s former home is in one of the flooded areas:
And if you want to help, the old standby of donating to the American Red Cross may not be the best use of your charity dollars. Even more reassuring (he said sarcastically), is knowing that the tax dollars used to rebuild the infrastructure may get washed away again next time, thanks to your president trying to curry favor with the climate-change deniers. (Two excerpts from the linked story are below.)
Ten days before Hurricane Harvey descended upon Texas on Friday, wreaking havoc and causing widespread flooding, President Donald Trump signed an executive order revoking a set of regulations that would have made federally funded infrastructure less vulnerable to flooding.
The Obama-era rules, which had not yet gone into effect, would have required the federal government to take into account the risk of flooding and sea-level rise as a result of climate change when constructing new infrastructure and rebuilding after disasters….
“This executive order is not fiscally conservative,” Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican, said in a statement. “It’s irresponsible, and it will lead to taxpayer dollars being wasted on projects that may not be built to endure the flooding we are already seeing and know is only going to get worse.”
The Obama administration estimated the regulations would increase building costs by 0.25% to 1.25% but save taxpayers significant money in the future. Studies have found that for every $1 spent on disaster mitigation, the government will save $4 on post-disaster aid.
50 inches of rain from an “unusually warm” Gulf of Mexico yet there’s no such thing as climate change? That’s a bit hard to fathom.
You done said…