Towheeblog

Click here for a clear explanation of how federal and local governments helped Houston spread into flood-prone areas in preparation for the current disaster. Lack of zoning laws in flood plains, covering former wetlands with pavement and buildings, allowing sequential rebuilding in the same place after flood damage, all subsidized by local and federal money and tax breaks and insurance and willful heedlessness from real estate developers to owners to politicians. Now Houston has had three “500 year” floods in the recent years. You gotta savor the irony of this happening in Exxon’s home turf where climate change is just not discussed in polite society.
We far-westerners can’t be smug. Here we encourage folks to build big homes in the forest, those same forests that are sure to burn at some point in the future. Or we’re building on the flanks of active volcanoes…or atop the San Andreas Fault and then pretending “it’s not our fault.”
Stubbornness and arrogance are amazing to behold…just heard one Houston couple explain they couldn’t leave their present neighborhood with their kids, even though their home has now flooded three times in two years.