Floods Are Inevitable. Catastrophe Is Not.

New York Times

9 hours ago

Images and stories of the devastation wrought by the July 4 flood of the Guadalupe River in Texas will stay with many of us for a long time. There has been an outpouring of compassion and sorrow for those who have died, remain missing or have lost their homes and possessions. There has also been a healthy dose of scrutiny of the shortcomings in early warning systems, government response and evacuation efforts — some of which have been blamed on the Trump administration's bludgeon of cuts across emergency services, weather reporting and scientific agencies.
But even with a flawless response, the storm that roared through that night would most likely have claimed many lives. The rest of us might now do well to look past the astonishment, sympathy or blame, and consider how to avoid or minimize similar hazards in the future. What happened in Central Texas is only the latest in a long series of horrific floods, and they're getting worse. In Ellicott City, Md., a flood level expected only once in 1,000 years occurred twice in a three-year span, in 2016 and 2018. In 2022, flash floods in Kentucky displaced thousands of people who had no flood insurance. In February of this year, devastating floods occurred in Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee. We should no longer be surprised by the inevitable.
We are living in a new age of flooding. We can no longer deny the increasing danger posed by these floods. Nor can we afford to continue believing we have the solutions to stop or contain the rise of water. The best option to save American lives is reducing our vulnerability and exposure to these floods. That means preventing unnecessary new development on floodplains, and amping up efforts to help people move their homes from high-risk areas to safe territory.
This starts with the protection of floodplains, the natural areas that have been shaped over time to absorb floods when they occur. Human development on these spaces destroys their ability to absorb excess water. To prevent it, we must implement adequate zoning policies that limit construction there. This is the least costly option for preventing flood damages from getting worse.
Likewise, relocation of flood-prone homes to higher ground has been an important strategy for decades. But there is still a huge investment poured into trying to prevent flooding damage from occurring, building levees to try to keep floods away from our homes and using emergency relief checks and insurance subsidies to pay victims for losses after they occur. Billions of dollars are spent to protect those who have homes and businesses in flood zones — and then billions more are spent on recovery efforts when those protections fail. The Natural Resources Defense Council analyzed thousands of data points and determined that for every $1.72 FEMA spends helping people move away from the paths of floods, $100 is spent to rebuild properties. We are essentially paying people to stay.
Our response to floods has been inadequate, if not misdirected. And now, owing to the heating climate, floods will be growing irrevocably worse, more widespread and longer in duration. We've failed to halt the losses and the threats of the past. Lacking a major course correction, we're destined to fail worse in the future.
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