Almost a decade after Hurricane Ike killed dozens of people and caused $30 billion in damage, a group of Texas politicians and business leaders say they finally have “all the support necessary” to break ground on a massive coastal barrier that would protect the Houston area from another devastating hurricane.
Now they just need $15 billion to build it. And that’s what they urged the federal government to provide in a recent letter to President Donald Trump.
Signers of the letter include Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, more than 20 area mayors, including Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, and several Houston-area members of the Texas Legislature.
[…]
Even for a president that has pledged to restore the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, the barrier will be a tough sell. Such an ambitious public works project has never been built in anticipation of a natural catastrophe. It took the Great Storm of 1900, which killed thousands of people in Galveston, to get a seawall constructed on the island; New Orleans’ failing levee system was not fixed until after Hurricane Katrina killed nearly 2,000 people in 2005; and only after Hurricane Sandy devastated New York did Congress allocate a significant amount of money to pay for storm protection studies.
The massive projects that do get funding also usually require years of planning and federal studies. In December, then-President Barack Obama signed a law that might help speed up that process for the Ike Dike, but there is still no official consensus plan on exactly what to build. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which will have the final say on what plan to pursue and is conducting its own study of the issue, has estimated that construction on any such system for Texas couldn’t begin until 2024 at the earliest.
And it might take far more than $15 billion to get the coastal spine up and running. Some have estimated it will actually cost twice that to build it, not including the money necessary for continued maintenance and operation of the barrier system.
We know what Trump’s promises are worth, so take that “pledge” with an appropriate amount of sea salt. That said, there’s no real precedent for this as noted in the story, and it’s not like the Republican Congress is inclined to spend money on anything but the Pentagon and tax cuts for the rich. So yeah, go ahead and ask – it costs nothing to ask – but don’t get your hopes up. The Chron has more.
Something needs to be done here to protect the Ship Channel & petro-plants, be it the Ike Dike or an alternative. Houston is dodging bullets here and eventually our luck will run out. The environmental and ecomonic costs of a hurricane strike in just the wrong place would make the Ike Dike look cheap. This is an issue that ought to unite the environmentalists, big oil, national security hawks, and pretty much everyone who uses petroleum products.
@Fly:
This is one of those rare moments when I agree with you, and your post was well thought out and well written.
With a Texas friendly Oval Office, House, and Senate, now’s the time to ask for our pork and have the best chance of getting it
Fly and Dan,
Keep dreaming.
You are talking about Republicans who have total control of state and federal government. “Governing” is not going to happen with these clowns.