txaggie_08 said:
I still can't believe subdivisions were allowed to be built below the height of the spillway. I guess no one ever thought it would be needed, but it just seems strange. That, and that development appears to have been allowed right at the base of the spillways. Weird planning all around on that one.
I can remember taking an engineering geology course from Norm Tilford (RIP) and he took us on a field trip to El Paso to a stormwater retention dam situated on the side of the mountains out there. We stood on the spillway as Norm explained that planners had known about the risk of flash floods coming down the mountainside water shed for decades...and the dam we were standing on had been in the planning maps for decades. It was built to hold back a 20-yr storm event and then would overflow over a concrete spillway and allow water to continue down the mountain. Then he turned us around to face downhill and we could see approximately 500 homes built immediately downstream of the dam...built AFTER the dam was built, with the closest only about 200-300 yards downstream of the spillway. Norm explained to us that the developers knew in explicit detail what would happen to that subdivision when the dam overtopped. He explained that city leaders and planners knew what would happen. He explained that realtors selling those houses knew what would happen. And then he explained that when the inevitable happened, that we would all get to watch on live TV as the governor stood in the aftermath of the flood and told us how the state or the federal government was going to spend millions of our tax dollars to help these poor unfortunate people recover from this terrible "unforeseeable" natural disaster. A natural disaster that he was standing there with us foreseeing.
Now an 800-1000 year storm in Houston and a 20 year storm frequency in El Paso are completely different, but I think the state needs to take a look at how we allow development in risky situations like that. I would be in favor of allowing liability to carry back over to developers if they failed to disclose potential hazards to residents buying from them. Obviously you can't make that kind of thing retroactive, but you could at least make new development be considered more carefully. I can't help but look at all the homes built in low lying former rice fields south and west of Houston and wonder why anybody is surprised at all that we are seeing widespread flooding there? I know in Fairfield, the subdivision has numerous small faults running across residential lots. I had a friend looking to buy there that asked the developer for a map of which lots had faults, and he was flat out told there were no faults in Fairfield. The sales agent for the developer lied to his face and continued to lie, even when told that my friend knew it was a lie. We should not allow developers to walk away unscathed from those kinds of situations where they are fully aware of a hazard and refuse to disclose it to buyers. Needless to say, my friend bought a house elsewhere.
