EDITORIAL: Focus on Trump’s response to future flooding in U.S.

Aug. 31--As the tropical storm that rained misery on Houston moves inland, national attention turns to the Trump administration's response to the epic flooding.

The nation reflexively watches the government's post-disaster conduct ever since the bungled federal response to Hurricane Katrina 12 years ago this week. But in Houston and elsewhere, more attention should be focused on bad government policy preceding the storm.

Houston is the nation's fourth largest city, with about 2.2 million people in the city alone and another 4.3 million in the surrounding metropolitan area. The city is famous for its rapid growth and the unregulated sprawl resulting from it. It has no zoning law.

There is no way to fully deal with the unprecedented amount of rain that Tropical Storm Harvey dumped on Houston. But the problem clearly was worse than it might have been because large swaths of the city and region have been paved without regard for the effect on infrastructure and flood control.

Every city is pro-development. But that and controlled development regarding flooding are not mutually exclusive concepts. If another major flood hits the Lackawanna River, for example, the cost will not be as high as in the past because the government not only has improved flood protection along the river, but removed many properties from the river's path.

Retreating from the water's edge is the most effective policy regarding flooding. Zoning and codes that reflect physical facts are next best.

So the focus on the Trump administration should be not just on its response to Harvey, but on its policy regarding future flooding.

Early in August, President Donald Trump issued an executive order reversing President Obama's 2015 executive order, which had required developers who receive federal money to rebuild after a flood to build to a 500-year flood level, three feet above the 100-year flood level or devise a better science-based standard.

"No longer will we tolerate one job-killing delay after another. No longer will we accept a broken system that benefits consultants and lobbyists at the expense of hard-working Americans," Trump said in reversing the standards.

The nonpartisan Pew Charitable Trust has estimated that every dollar spent on mitigating a flood saves $4 in recovery and rebuilding costs. Clearly, mitigation is the smart public policy but it's drowning in a flood of political rhetoric.

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