{"id":40297,"date":"2015-07-20T16:35:44","date_gmt":"2015-07-20T21:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=40297"},"modified":"2015-07-20T16:35:44","modified_gmt":"2015-07-20T21:35:44","slug":"keeping-houses-out-of-texas-floodwaters-could-cost-billions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2015\/07\/20\/keeping-houses-out-of-texas-floodwaters-could-cost-billions\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping Houses Out of Texas Floodwaters Could Cost Billions"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_32501\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-32501\" alt=\"First responders pull flood victims from a flooded South East Austin neighborhood.\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2013\/11\/flood-picture-1-300x194.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"194\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2013\/11\/flood-picture-1-300x194.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2013\/11\/flood-picture-1-620x402.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2013\/11\/flood-picture-1.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon\/KUT News<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">First responders pull flood victims from a flooded South East Austin neighborhood.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Back on May 26th, Houston woke up to flooded freeways and neighborhoods as bayous overflowed their banks. In the Texas Hill Country, homes and bridges washed away and levees broke.<\/p>\n<p>But super-heavy rainfall is nothing new in Texas and in fact, it was years earlier that experts had warned that the state was doing dangerously little to minimize flood damage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe gave flood control the grade of D,\u201d said Curtis Beitel, president of the Texas chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/215156367&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\" height=\"166\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<!--more-->For years, they\u2019ve been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.infrastructurereportcard.org\/texas\/texas\/\" target=\"_blank\">giving Texas bad grades<\/a> for what they say is far too little spending on projects to reduce flood damage like channels, detention ponds, and levees. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.floods.org\/Files\/Conf2013_ppts\/G6\/G6_Baker.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Texas Water Development Board estimates<\/a> there are nearly $14 billion dollars in such projects needed statewide.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe that\u2019s one reason Texas <a href=\"http:\/\/floodsafety.com\/national\/life\/statistics.htm#biblio\" target=\"_blank\">was once ranked number one in the nation<\/a> for highest flood damage claims and in recent years has been <a href=\"http:\/\/opim.wharton.upenn.edu\/risk\/library\/WRCib2011b-nfip-who-pays.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">surpassed <\/a>only by Louisiana.<\/p>\n<p>Civil engineer Beitel says studies have found that one of the most effective ways to reduce flood damage are building codes requiring that new structures be at least a couple feet above the expected flood level.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/library.municode.com\/index.aspx?clientId=10123\" target=\"_blank\">Houston\u2019s code<\/a> is now one foot.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd we know that now. I really wish we\u2019d known that a hundred years ago,\u201d Beitel said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back on May 26th, Houston woke up to flooded freeways and neighborhoods as bayous overflowed their banks. In the Texas Hill Country, homes and bridges washed away and levees broke. But super-heavy rainfall is nothing new in Texas and in fact, it was years earlier that experts had warned that the state was doing dangerously [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[157],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40297"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40304,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40297\/revisions\/40304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}