re: Does Houston have too much concrete?

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yeah thats it Einstein. If they had more grass and trees it would've absorbed all the rain.

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You are missing his point.

Land development kills natural drainage.

No, Texas politicians didn't steal the tax money intended for drainage improvements, like Louisiana's did.

Houston has the competency to fix issues after this. New Orleans will always be a shithole.

Yes there is too much concrete and not enough parks

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don't disagree that NOLA leadership is awful, but it's far more complex to drain NOLA during a storm. It's a much bigger engineering challenge. It's not even close. Even the Dutch think New Orleans is extremely difficult to manage.

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Which makes it an even bigger abomination that worthless frick Landrieu let the pumps and drainage get that bad off in the first place.

I work in Stormwater solutions for a living . I can tell you that Texas and a few states in the far northeast are the lead dogs in innovative Stormwater solutions .

This is just a freak rain event .

All new commercial construction over the past 10 years is required to offset impervious development .

I live in northwest houston and am taking on water .

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would overwhelm any system.

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Mitch, is that you?

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Does Houston have too much concrete? by LSUFanHouston

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nope...all of that crap about too much concrete is a bunch of tree-hugging bullshite. fact is, water flows a lot better over concrete than it does through vegetation, etc. if the contour of the land and drainage system is equal, a lot more water will move if it is all concrete.

what you are alluding to is probably true for an afternoon thunderstorm that is not going to drain all the way to the ocean anyway, but the scale of rain that we are looking at is way beyond what any drainage system in existence can handle, regardless of what the surfaces are made of.

there's a major flood of some type in houston every 5 years ... lived there for 20 years ... that's about avg ...


not sure what can be done about it ...

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A lack of zoning and a general desire of small government seem to make this happen.

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Certainly a major contributor although few cities can handle 30 or more inches of rain in a couple of days, regardless of zoning and buildimg code that restricts impervious surface cover.