Posted on May 29, 2019
Hurricane Harvey dumped 51 inches of rain on the Houston area, flooded hundreds of thousands of homes and left $125 billion in damage. In its aftermath, it was hard to think of anything but making sure that kind of catastrophic flooding didn’t happen again. But as we rightfully pay attention to flooding, we must also widen our focus and ask, what if the next big storm is different?
It’s hard to forget Harvey, but we must remember Ike.
More than a decade after the Category 2 storm battered the region, killed 43 people and caused almost $30 billion worth of damage, we remain vulnerable to storm surge coming up Galveston Bay and into the Houston Ship Channel. The proposed Coastal Spine project to be built by the Army Corps of Engineers — currently a system of sand dunes and gates at the mouth of Galveston Bay — is still in the study phase and is not expected to be finished until 2035 at the earliest, with a cost of about $31 billion.
Source: houstonchronicle.com
