{"id":9040,"date":"2014-05-24T13:54:16","date_gmt":"2014-05-24T17:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=9040"},"modified":"2014-05-24T16:04:57","modified_gmt":"2014-05-24T20:04:57","slug":"insurers-suing-for-lack-of-preparation-for-record-floods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/insurers-suing-for-lack-of-preparation-for-record-floods.html","title":{"rendered":"Insurers suing for lack of preparation for record floods"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\nWhat if, in addition to the record floods of 2009 and 2013 and 2014\r\napparently caused by local lack of planning in our watersheds,\r\nwhat if we got 15 inches of rain in one 24 hour period like\r\nPensacola did a few weeks ago?\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nLocal governments might get sued by insurers for lack of planning,\r\nlike 200 communities in the Chicago area already got sued.\r\nMaybe we should plan ahead for greater weather variability\r\ncaused by climate change.\r\n

\r\nEric Holthaus wrote for Future Tense on Slate 30 April 2014,\r\n\r\nThe Calamitous Climate Responsible for Florida\u2019s Record Rainfall<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nFarmers Insurance, a major company you probably know from its\r\ncommercials featuring J.K. Simmons explaining how “what you\r\ndon’t know can hurt you,”\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nfiled nine class action lawsuits\r\nlast month against nearly 200 communities in the Chicago area. The\r\ncompany argues that the communities failed to prepare for heavy rain\r\nand floodwaters, despite dire warnings from researchers and numerous\r\nreports from the US government and the UN that climate change is\r\nbringing increasingly severe weather.\r\n\r\nReuters’ Mica Rosenberg<\/a>\r\nreports that the suits are the first of their kind.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe legal debate may center on whether an uptick in natural\r\ndisasters is foreseeable or an “act of God.” The cases\r\nraise the question of how city governments should manage their\r\nbudgets before costly emergencies occur.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n“We will see more and more cases,” said Michael Gerrard,\r\ndirector of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School\r\nin New York. “No one is expected to plan for the 500-year\r\nstorm, but if horrible events are happening with increasing\r\nfrequency, that may shift the duties.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nActually, around here we are preparing for what used to be\r\n700-year flooding to happen every 15-35 years, with smaller\r\nflooding already having happened four years after the\r\nrecord 2009 flood.\r\nNow much of that isn’t exactly climate change;\r\nit’s probably mostly a combination of too much clear-cutting,\r\ndevelopment of buildings and parking lots and roads with\r\nimpermeable surfaces, invasive species changing hydrology,\r\nand agricultural runoff, not to mention local governments\r\npermitting development in flood plains.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nNow what if a storm like the one that dropped 5.68 inches in an hour\r\nand 15.55 inches in 24 hours moved about 250 miles to the east\r\nand dropped even part of that on Valdosta and Lowndes County.\r\nRemember, we’re only about 70 miles from the Gulf at Alapachee Bay.\r\nAnd what if it followed the usual sort of storm path and dumped\r\nmuch of that upstream from here?\r\nAs Valdosta is fond of reminding us, and as\r\n\r\nDavid Apple of the Corps pointed also said<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n“Valdosta is at the bottom of a 1,500-square-mile drainage basin.”\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nA drainage basin that usually gets weather from the Gulf\r\nstraight from Pensacola:\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nLooking\r\n\r\nupstream<\/a>,\r\non\r\n\r\nthe Little River near Adel<\/a>, we’ve already seen the second highest recorded\r\nwater level ever recorded 26 February 2013 at 21.02 feet,\r\nonly lower than the 22.35 feet 3 April 2009,\r\nand higher than the 21-foot records in 1986 and 1948.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n

\r\nThe\r\n\r\nLittle River at GA 122 peaked the next day<\/a>; we don’t know how that\r\ncompared to 2009 or earlier, because, to their credit,\r\n\r\nthe Lowndes County Commission funded that gage after the flood of 2009<\/a>.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nHowever, on \r\nthe Withlacoochee River at McMillan road near Bemiss<\/a>\r\na peak of 21.78 feet two days later on 28 February 2014 was only exceeded by\r\npeaks of 22.44 in 1991, 22.50 in 1998, and 25.66 in 4 April 2009.\r\n

\r\nAt the closest gage to the often-overflowing Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant,\r\non\r\n\r\nthe Withlacoochee River at US 84<\/a>,\r\nthe 1 March 2013 peak of 31.48 was exceeded by the 1948 peak of 31.70 feet,\r\nyet the 5 April 2009 peak of 34.67 feet was amost three feet higher than that.\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"300x219<\/a>\r\nAnd that 2009 event,\r\nwhile\r\n\r\nquite rainy<\/a>, was not<\/em> a record rainfall.\r\nWhat if we did get a record rainfall?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAccording to the EPA’s\r\n\r\nClimate Change Indicators in the United States<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIn recent years, a larger percentage of precipitation has come in\r\nthe form of intense single-day events. Eight of the top 10 years for\r\nextreme one-day precipitation events have occurred since 1990 (see\r\nFigure 1).\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAs Eric Holthaus explained:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nClimate change is playing a role in extreme rainfall events like the\r\none on Tuesday. The science is here is relatively straightforward:\r\nAs the atmosphere warms, it can hold more water vapor. You can see\r\nthis effect for yourself on muggy summer days when droplets of\r\ncondensation form on the windows of air-conditioned buildings.\r\nThere’s now more moisture available that can turn into rain. Warmer\r\ndays lead to more evaporation, and more evaporation leads to heavier\r\nrainfall.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAnd that heavier rainfall is more likely to happen, with more droughts in between.\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"600x326<\/a>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThis is why\r\n\r\nbuilding a levee where Sugar Creek joins the Withlacoochee River<\/a>\r\nisn’t a solution.\r\nWe don’t even know how bad the problem is.\r\nThe Corps allowed 3 feet of freeboard from their highest Withlacoochee\r\nflood prediction to the top of the levee.\r\nWe already saw that three feet water level difference between 1948 and 2009.\r\nWhat if the Corps is wrong, and the neighborhoods around Sugar Creek flood like\r\nthe Ninth Ward of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina?\r\n\r\nLawsuits flew about that one<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAnd in a flood that bad, what about the rest our watersheds?\r\n

\r\nThe Corps never once mentioned record rainfalls or climate change\r\nduring its two presentations May 6th.\r\nWhile I commend the Corps on doing the initial study and Valdosta on\r\nfunding it,\r\nI commend the Corps more for wanting to do the followon watershed-wide\r\nstudy:\r\n

\r\nThis report established that there could be Federal interest in pursuing future flood management risk studies under other USACE authorities.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAnd of course it’s also good that\r\n\r\nValdosta has funded and is implementing plans for a force main<\/a>\r\nand to move the Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant uphill.\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nIn addition to all that, as\r\n\r\nCouncil Tim Carrol said<\/a>, we need to\r\n

\r\n\r\nEngage congressional leaders, secure funding and find long term,\r\nsustainable solutions that benefit all communities within the watershed\r\nbasin. A levee by itself is not the answer.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nA levee could even\r\nencourage settling too close<\/a>\r\ndue to a false sense of security.\r\n

\r\nPlanning ahead would be prudent, to avoid lawsuits from insurers.\r\nNot to mention to prepare and maybe prevent property damage and\r\nloss of life from future flooding.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What if, in addition to the record floods of 2009 and 2013 and 2014 apparently caused by local lack of planning in our watersheds, what if we got 15 inches of rain in one 24 hour period like Pensacola did a few weeks ago? Local governments might get sued by insurers for lack of planning, […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[47,14,16,20,88,73,54,89],"tags":[8719,8704,8706,5034,8701,2155,7671,8702,8710,2475,12,7,8734,3591,3590,7670,8731,6157,6158,6,8726,8735],"class_list":["post-9040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-economy","category-environment","category-law","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-safety","category-valdosta-city-council","category-weather","tag-climate-change","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-floods","tag-georgia","tag-insurance","tag-katrina","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lawsuit","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-new-orleans","tag-ninth-ward","tag-rainfall","tag-safety","tag-u-s-army-corps-of-engineers","tag-usace","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-city-council","tag-weather"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-2lO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9040"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9061,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9040\/revisions\/9061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}