Roger Simon suggested in Pajamas Media that Harvey, for all of its destruction, could become a catalyst for something good and unifying. He may be on to something. The cleanup and repair work will be a national effort which, maybe, will allow people to forget their hurt feelings over last year’s election. To be sure, there will always be people willing to take cheap political shots or yammer on about climate change. However, Simon may be on to something.
How about a national project to make the Texas Gulf Coast more hurricane proof?
Beyond the period of cleanup and repairs, the nation should consider if there are ways to make the Texas Gulf Coast less prone to damage by hurricanes.
Houston and its surrounding areas are especially prone to flooding, by storm surges, and by the incessant rain that accompanies these storms.
A multi-billion dollar project called the “Ike Dike” has been proposed that would shield the gulf coast around the Houston-Galveston area from storm surges of the sort that afflicted it during Hurricane Ike in 2008. The project would likely pay for itself when the next storm hits the area dead on, protecting it from floods.
Another problem afflicting the Houston area especially is that its system of bayous and rivers have proven to be inadequate to protect the city from serious flooding. Even torrential rain storms cause the bayous to overflow their banks and inundate nearby streets and homes.
Project Brays, for example, has been widening and deepening the Brays Bayou, which regularly floods, to prevent this kind of inundations. The project is scheduled to be completed by 2021. A more city wide project to improve storm drainage would certainly help to mitigate against future storm occurrences.
That sort of thing and similar projects would certainly fit into President Trump’s vision of creating infrastructure.
The left ought to like it as well due to the jobs the project would create.
Could we learn to divert hurricanes?
One useful bit of technology that would help make events like Harvey a thing of the past would be one that would divert hurricanes from their destructive path and lead them up to the cold North Atlantic where they will die a quick death.
No one seems to know whether such a thing is possible. However, it might prove useful to at least throw a little bit of money at the problem and see what our best scientific minds come up with. Even a $10 billion project will pay for itself many times over if it develops a way to divert hurricanes.
