The state’s priority for mitigating disasters such as Hurricane Ike is exactly backward — at least in terms of what’s good for Galveston.
Galveston officials should lobby to use federal money that eventually will come into the city to elevate houses that were damaged by the storm — not to bulldoze them.
Such a move to change is coming up at Thursday’s council meeting. We hope the public will tune in to the discussion. Eventually, this little discussion will involve a lot of money.
The state’s book-length plan states that the priority for hazard mitigation funds is to remove damaged houses from flood plains. Instead of elevating damaged houses, the idea is to bulldoze them and create green space.
That might be a good idea in a few high-risk neighborhoods. But three quarters of the buildings on the island were flooded.
Obviously, funneling the hazard-mitigation money into solutions involving bulldozers would be a catastrophe for Galveston as a community.
Ironically, that priority would benefit some wealthy property owners who are trying to talk the state into paying them for their damaged houses, which ended up on the public beach. As we’ve said before, funds to mitigate disasters were not intended to bail out wealthy people who bought beach-front property. But that is an argument that the council should address.
We’d like to suggest three things the council could do to ensure that projects that would help the community recover are funded.
First, the state’s plan is in writing, but it can be changed. The plan says so — in writing. Elevating houses isn’t the priority in writing now, but it could be.
Second, an awful lot of what planners assumed would happen in a storm like this was simply wrong. For example, the plan anticipated much more wind damage than water damage. That, of course, was simply wrong. City officials must be prepared to argue that funding for recovery efforts must reflect the realities on the ground, rather than the assumptions in the plan. Otherwise, the government is going to do some incredibly stupid things in funding recovery efforts.
Third, “mitigation” is a word that means many things to many people. Some people are hoping to use mitigation funds to repair and elevate wrecked houses to protect them against future storms. To others, “mitigation” means money to rebuild beaches. Others contend “mitigation” funds should be used to pay the owners of houses that ended up on the public beach.
By federal law, a percentage of the money that comes into this area must be spent on mitigation. A lot of money will be used for “mitigation.”
It would help if the council could better define that word by setting some priorities. Otherwise, projects of marginal value to the community are likely to be funded first, just because they’re backed by influential people who are good at lobbying for their own interests.
If the council is looking for priorities, finding money to elevate the thousands of damaged houses in ordinary neighborhoods would be a good place to start.
