Texas residents hunkering down as Hurricane Harvey approaches the coast won’t be comforted by this proposal from Trump’s FEMA chief.
President Donald Trump’s emergency management director said he’s pushing for an overhaul of disaster relief so that states, cities and homeowners bear more of the costs, and less of the risk falls on the federal government.
The Federal Flood Insurance Program is currently being rewritten, with a new version expected next month. Even under the Obama administration, there were suggestions for tightening up the rules on homes built in areas subject to frequent flooding. States and localities have sometimes been lax in enforcing rules about building in flood plains, counting on federal insurance to take the brunt if anything goes wrong. Environmental groups have also supported toughening the rules to help protect wetlands and critical habitat near streams.
In recent years, costs for disaster funding have risen sharply, and Congress has looked for a way to keep the flood insurance program from washing away an ever larger part of the budget.
The federal government spent $357 billion on disaster recovery over the past decade; the number of billion-dollar disasters in 2016 was the second-highest on record, after adjusting for inflation.
But there’s a fundamental problem that’s being ignored—homeowners are being punished for building in flood-prone areas, at a time when “flood prone” is being redefined. While Trump’s left hand is taking away the funds for dealing with floods, his right is changing the rules to encourage more construction in areas subject to flooding.
Many of these facing flooding in Texas over the next day and week don’t live in areas that would normally be considered flood prone. They’re likely above the 50-year, or even 100-year flood line. It’s not necessarily bad state or local planning that’s at fault—it’s a 12 foot storm surge accompanied by 30 inches of rain from a storm that grew almost overnight on Gulf waters packed with record warmth.
Water temperatures at the surface of the Gulf of Mexico and near South Florida are on fire. They spurred a historically warm winter from Houston to Miami and could fuel intense thunderstorms in the spring from the South to the Plains.
While scientists are reluctant to attribute any particular disaster to climate change, there’s little doubt that climate change is making many disasters worse. And, as we move into the next decade, areas that would not have been considered flood-prone in the past are likely to face unprecedented levels of inundation from rising seas and intensified storms.
So reducing the federal government’s obligation to help with incidents of flooding may also end up punishing millions who built in areas that were not traditionally considered flood-prone. Rather than complaining that they can’t afford the rising cost of disasters, Congress might take steps to reduce the disasters, but that’s an unpopular approach in a Republican Congress.
Rather than taking steps to address future disasters, Trump is laying the groundwork for even larger price tags down the line. Trump’s inability to acknowledge climate change has led to a series of steps, such as rolling back Obama-era guidelines on infrastructure projects—a change that went almost unnoticed amid Trump’s toxic racism.
President Trump's astonishing press conference on Tuesday was, ostensibly, an announcement about infrastructure. But his brief remarks on the permitting process were entirely overshadowed by his defense of attendees at a white supremacist rally, among other remarks.
But the president was, in fact, announcing a new executive order with serious repercussions. Among other things, he is rolling back an Obama-era order that infrastructure projects, like roads and bridges, be designed to survive rising sea levels and other consequences of climate change.
The changes Trump is making mean that federal funds will be available to infrastructure projects even if those projects don’t plan for climate change when selecting the location for roadways, bridges, or other structures. This all but ensures that structures will be built in areas where, within the next couple of decades, rising ocean levels and warmer surface temperatures will result in damage and destruction. Since these are infrastructure projects, allowing them to be built in areas that will flood in the future means that, in a worst case scenario, these newly created roadways and bridges could be flooded at the very time they’re needed to evacuate a community in peril.
Supporters say the Obama flood rules would protect lives, by positioning new roads and buildings on safer ground, and protect financial investments by ensuring that infrastructure projects last as long as they were intended.
So … while the move of Trump’s FEMA director may appear on the surface to be a reasonable follow-on to tighter rules proposed under Obama, the fact that Trump is simultaneously loosening rules on construction in areas of future flooding turns the proposed changes from “tough love” to “tough s**t.”