Newspaper or online story headlines:

• Potable Water System Continues to Provide Safe and Affordable Water to Millions
• Drainage System Safely Conveys Another Rain Event Away From Millions of Residents
• Transportation Network Allows Millions to Get to Work and Produce Regional Economic Value
• Millions Live and Work In Comfort Inside Electrically Powered Air Conditioned Environments

Ever see headlines like these?  No. I didn’t think so.

As we’ve seen more acutely in the last few years, news is product for sale. It’s packaged and designed to appeal to a certain customer. It features stories and subjects that people will find interesting, emotional, and attractive. It features stories that will “sell.” It features stories that attract buyers looking to confirm their world view.

“Nothing bad happened today” is not a story that will sell very well. Stories about public infrastructure systems that work the vast majority of the time do not sell newspapers or generate online clicks.

I recently attended the West Houston Association’s Flood Control Technical Forum, which featured the Executive Director of the Harris County Flood Control District, Russ Poppe, and City of Houston Chief Resiliency Officer, Steve Costello.

Mr. Poppe showed a slide which listed the number of homes flooded in each of several watersheds during the Tax Day and Memorial Day floods of 2015 and 2016. They were large numbers. As “just” numbers, they did not fully convey the horrible negative emotional, physical, financial, and social impacts those large rain events (and the inability of the drainage systems to convey the resulting large amount of stormwater runoff) had on the people who flooded. The stories of the people who flooded are raw, emotional, visceral, and terrible. The photographs of flooded homes are powerful.

But the slide also included the number of homes that did NOT flood because of drainage system improvements constructed in each of the watersheds before the rains came.  Here’s the slide:

When we total the totals, here’s what we get:

• Homes flooded from two large rain events: 5,750.
• Homes NOT flooded from two large rain events because of infrastructure improvements designed and built by Harris County Flood Control District: 14,385.

This is great news, especially given that the HCFCD is funded with revenue from an annual property tax rate of about $0.028 per $100.00 valuation. [This means that a family living in a home valued at $100,000 will contribute about $28.00 each year to HCFCD revenues.] That’s about $2.33 per month.

Just image the flood damage reduction and flood risk reduction we could accomplish if we could find a few more dollars a month in funding.