Beryl Shows Houston Still Has Flood Problems

Though the city of Houston has worked for years to mitigate flood damage from tropical storms, problems still persist in the wake of Hurricane Beryl.

After every major storm in Houston, the residents take to the flooded streets in a variety of ways. This year, someone rode a jet ski down a flooded I-45. During Tropical Storm Allison, there were waters skiers on Westheimer being pulled by a lifted pick-up truck. In perhaps the most Texas moment since the fall of the Alamo, a man happily fished for bass in the parking lot of a Whataburger following a flood in 2019.

While whimsical, these moments showcase a long running problem in the bayou city, flooding and the attitude around it. Some of it is unescapable because the city is essentially built on a swamp composed of dozens of waterways and at least seven major bayous. The rest is due to climate change increasing the potency of storms that hit the city and infrastructure unequipped to deal with it. Unfortunately, the omnipresence of floods has led to Houstonians seeing it as just another part of life.

“I think if this storm had happened in almost any other part of America, people would be describing it as catastrophic flooding,” Ben Hirsch, a co-director at West Street Recovery, told The Washington Post on Wednesday. “There’s a kind of numbness that sets in; people get used to it. But at the same time, people have this sort of trauma from it.”

The Biden Administration has been investing heavily in Houston’s flooding infrastructure through the Justice40 initiative, which mandates that 40 percent of funds allocated to deal with environmental issues go to marginalized communities. This incudes northeast Houston, which is often the hardest hit by floods and slowest to respond.

Since starting Justice40, billions of dollars have flowed into communities, helping them build better flood control as well as reinforce the areas for resilience and green energy. The latter is particularly important for community centers and other distribution sites as more than a million Houstonians remain without electricity.

However, the money from the Biden Administration is cleaning up a mess decades in the making. The city has increased its footprint by 63 percent since 1997, adding miles of concrete, asphalt, and other non-absorbent surfaces. The city has tried to counteract this by mandating retention ponds around most major new construction where feasible.

The basins and other flood infrastructure in Houston was significantly expanded after Hurricane Harvey in 2017. More ambitious projects like building drainage tunnels and adding more run-off areas to the west of the city are expensive and likely decades away.

In the meantime, the intensity and number of big storms continues to rise as the global temperature does form man-made climate change. Houston residents deal with it as best they can. Sometimes that involves turning flooded roads into water sports venues, which at least staves off the despair from the massive problem. It’s hard to be sad about a climate apocalypse on a jet ski.