Emergency responders throughout Texas continue to struggle with another round of storms. This has been the wettest May on record. The rainfall has recharged dry reservoirs and effectively ended the drought.
But at a price - over 20 lives have been lost and untold flood damage.
With so much rain there would be no way to avoid having a disaster but could better planning, emergency management and state standards for flood insurance help in reducing the damage and lives lost.
Curtis B. Beitel is the president of the Texas Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Beitel says Texas has no centralized flood-control program: it leaves that responsibility to cities and counties. But cities which are strapped for cash do not always build infrastructure. In 2012, of 27 Army Corps of Engineers flood-reduction projects in the state, only 12 received federal funding—largely because of a lack of money from local sponsors. It does not help that most of Texas’s major rivers and floodplains are not well mapped.
