I guess you have seen the flooding in Houston. Sorry about the problems. I have seen the pictures too on TV. Not 1 storm drain or dykes could I see. It looks suspiciously like the city planners (Rep) are skimping on flood defences. Stupid really as this coastline has regular hurricanes. They are considering releasing the contents of 2 resevoirs. More water....?
This is climate change in action. These are the worst rains to ever in history to hit Houston. We can continue to expect events like this as sea waters continue to rise and the earth warms. Sad but true.
Houston's Mayor is an African American Democrat. The former Mayor was a Dem and a lesbian and Houston haven't had a Republican administration in decades. The water to be released is a decision of the Army Corp of Engineers. This tool time shit should be relegated to the Politics Forum.
Just trying to be objective here - we know Texas compared to many places in America is a low-tax state...so the annual budgets in these major cities in Texas is perhaps limited....with that said - if I am a Texas governor, is spending billions of dollars to ensure that all Texas cities can survive a once-in-300-years-flood going to be my number one priority? Where does the money come from? How do I justify it?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0128_050128_tv_hurricane_2.html --- Kam-biu Liu, a geology professor at Louisiana State University, discovered ocean sand in core samples from inland lakes on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. From these samples, Liu concluded that extremely powerful hurricanes battered the Gulf Coast and dumped the sand into the lakes. Liu thinks the core samples indicate that hurricanes that would be considered catastrophic by modern standards were regularly battering the Gulf Coast thousands of years ago. From about 3,400 years ago to about 1,000 years ago, the Gulf Coast was hit repeatedly by very powerful hurricanes, Liu said. The frequency of hits increases by three to five times more than today. The ancient Maya Indians—who had their heyday in Mexico and Central America from about A.D. 250 to 900—had more than a passing familiarity with the tempests that regularly howled off the Atlantic. They called their god of storms Hurukan, and it's likely that our term for the storms evolved from this name.---