Spring Branch District issued the following announcement on Sept. 7.
We got lucky, but we also did everything right as a community. As Tropical Storm Laura travelled through the gulf, our team was data-driven, relying on projected storm surge data from the National Weather Service’s Sea, Lake and Overland Surges from Hurricanes (SLOSH) model, traffic patterns, and evacuation timelines to guide our decisions. We carefully considered forecast and tracking information from the National Hurricane Center advisories and advice from local meteorologists. When it became clear Laura was going to be a bad storm, we considered every possible scenario and weighed the dangers with each. We discussed mandatory evacuations and were ready to make the call, knowing the herculean effort that it would take. Human life is always the priority, and when there is potential for a catastrophic event, we must err on the side of information.
I’m proud of our community’s response — we did everything we could do. Thank you to all the folks who took the steps to prepare, recognizing that hope is not a strategy. And we don’t stop when the storm takes a different course or even at the end of hurricane season — we are constantly preparing for future storms. County mitigation projects are moving forward, faster than ever before. We’ve completed 21 flood mitigation projects valued at $123 million. There are 144 active bond projects, and $427 million in bond funds have been authorized. Read more about the county’s spending on flood mitigation projects at HarrisThrives.org. We are raising bridges to safer levels and carving out millions of gallons of increased detention capacity. With an eye toward smarter development, we tightened development standards in the county as much as legally possible, so upstream developments don’t flood downstream neighbors. We’re buying out homes that flood repeatedly and turning them into green space. We created a new framework for post-disaster recovery, so recovery happens first in the areas that are worst hit, not just in those areas with big pockets, or with connections downtown. We are exploring all possible alternatives when it comes to a coastal barrier, and we’ll continue to leverage every local dollar to support flood control.
But we cannot do this alone. We need our federal government to discuss flood mitigation, invest more in long-term mitigation, and, on the most basic level, to acknowledge the reality of climate change and the historic storms we are seeing now. It shouldn’t take a near miss of a catastrophic hurricane to force our national leaders to recognize the urgency of investing in flood infrastructure. Congress should follow our lead in expediting flood projects and they must do everything in their power to fund a coastal barrier for Galveston Bay, now. Time is running out.
Original source can be found here.
Source: Spring Branch District
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