In addition to the huge list of recovery and reconstruction activities, we need to think about our next planning and engineering activities to be better prepared and informed for our next large rain event. There is no engineering solution that will prevent large rain events – so we WILL have another one.  Here’s a list of ten list of planning and engineering activities we should undertake:

1. Update Rain Event Statistics:  Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) is currently a funding partner with the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) “Atlas 14” effort, which is recalculating all rain event statistics for the entire country. The work for the Texas area is currently underway and we should try to accelerate that effort if at all possible. We also should make sure that the rain events of 2016 and 2017 are included in analysis. This will update the depth of the 1% annual chance, 24-hour event – our design basis for all new infrastructure.
2. Estimate Future Conditions: If we graph the frequency of daily rainfall depth measurements over time we see a gradual increase in the frequency of 1″ days, 2″ days, and 3″ days going into the future. We should use this data to estimate how much the 1% annual chance, 24-hour event is increasing each year going into the future. This would allow us to estimate the depth of rain associated with the 1% annual chance, 24-hour event in any future year. This would help inform how we design new infrastructure, which is currently sized to handle about 12.5″ in 24-hours.
3. Prepare Cost Estimates:  We should estimate the costs associated with infrastructure and development designs that can handle the 0.2% and the 1% annual chance, 24-hour event; 25, 50, and 75 years into the future. This would allow policy makers and tax payers (you and me) to see the cost differences alongside the policy options. These costs should be “life-cycle” costs – that is they should include the initial capital costs plus the future replacement or repair costs (prorated by the probability of loss).
4. Discuss Policy Options and Costs: We need to have some robust discussions about our willingness to pay for reducing flood risks. Today, just days after the storm, people seem very willing to pay a lot for nearly zero risk. But as the memory of the storm fades that willingness to pay diminishes. If we present and discuss the cost of achieving a few different levels of risk (say the 0.2% annual chance or the 1% annual chance), then tax payers, elected officials, and interest groups can hopefully reach an informed consensus.
5. Invest to Reduce Existing Risks: No planning and engineering effort would be complete without looking at existing risks. We have thousands of homes inside the EXISTING 1% annual chance, 24-hour event floodplains, we have channels and drainage systems that can’t handle the EXISTING 1% annual chance, 24-hour event, much less the estimated future event size. HCFCD has reported a $27 billion cost to upgrade all channels and bayous to handle the 1% annual chance, 24-hour event.  The City of Houston and Harris County (and other local governments) would also have costs to upgrade their local drainage systems. In 1999 the City of Houston received an estimate of $2.7 billion for drainage improvement needs. These investments might include buying out structures, elevating structures, channel improvements, drainage system improvements, detention facility construction, roadway flood gauges, underpass warning lights and gates, and many other facilities.  We need to make these investments (see Item 7).
6. Pick a Risk Level and Update Design Rules: Based on the results of Items 1-5, local governments should pick a common risk level and update their drainage and floodplain management rules. The rule updates could include a variety of measures. We could elevate structures, establish riparian buffers. We could impose larger minimum detention requirements and add minimum volume control requirements (retention) to address not just peak runoff rates, but also increases runoff volumes. We could impose minimum “free-board” requirements (the height difference between the anticipated flood water level [at the selected risk level] and the structure you are trying to protect). We could incentivize or require the use of natural drainage systems (see Item 8 below).
7. Increase Spending on Public Drainage Infrastructure, Especially in Older Areas: The current property tax rate allocated to Harris County Flood Control District is $0.02827 for each $100 of appraised value. So if you live in a home appraised at $100,000 your current annual tax payment to Harris County Flood Control District is $28.27 per year.  If you live in the City of Houston you would also be subject to the 11.8 cents property tax capture to Rebuild Houston and perhaps another $4.00 per month in the city’s drainage fee (depending upon the size of your property and how much of it was impervious). I think most people would support increasing their contribution to our drainage infrastructure, but see Items 4 and 5 above. Any revenue collection approach could be structured to minimize the burden to lower income citizens and the amount collected should be proportional to the amount of stormwater runoff from each property. Retrofitting under served areas should be our focus. See Item 6 above.
8. Use Green Stormwater Infrastructure or Natural Drainage Systems: Traditional drainage uses concrete pipes to move stormwater away from properties quickly. We then store the water in large holes in the ground (called detention basins) and release the water slowly. The release rate is restricted so the flowrate after development is less than pre-development flowrate. This doesn’t control the total volume of runoff, which is a key issue in flooding of flat areas like Houston. We should design stormwater systems to slow the water down and encourage more evaporation, infiltration, and consumption by plants. This green stormwater approach is not a silver bullet, but it would help with flooding issues and it sometimes costs less than traditional systems. Every cubic foot of stormwater we can manage or control where it falls is one less we need to convey or worry about flooding something. I’ve written about this before, here and here.
9. Enhance Risk Communication and Citizen Engagement: We have the information and technology to provide citizens with better information about their risk of flooding. The risk of flooding should be communicated during real estate transactions or when someone rents an apartment.  We can provide very accurate and timely notifications and warnings to each citizen, home owner, and business. Rainfall estimates, actual rainfall amounts, bayou levels, reservoir release rates, gate status, and other information can be served up to each citizen’s cell phone. We need to set up a system to do this. This might be done using an “op-out” format, so everyone’s signed up automatically. Public safety could be the justification for the op-out approach.
10. Implement a Volume Trading Program: Local governments should join together to create, for each drainage area or watershed in the region, a stormwater volume capture target and unit cost for each cubic foot of stormwater. All new projects would then need to comply with the new design rules. The stormwater volume cost would create an incentive to build more detention or capture volume into the project, because any excess could be sold to another party in the same drainage area. This scheme would incentivize building more detention and volume capture facilities which would reduce flooding risks.  I wrote more about this in my post about policy options for the new City of Houston “Flood Czar.”
    

There is no silver bullet to SOLVE Houston’s flooding issues, but these planning and engineering actions would help us all deal with the next large rain event.

by Leo Linbeck III 09/02/2017

[This is a re-post copied directly from New Geography ]

Narratives are not necessarily built on facts; they’re built on stories, pictures, graphics, and videos. Ideally, we want our narratives to be aligned with the facts; but that doesn’t always happen.

Here is a synthesis of some of the predictable narratives being spun in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Harvey from such places as The Washington Post, Slate, The Guardian, Newsweek and NPR:

Hurricane Harvey was a catastrophe of epic proportions. Floodwater is everywhere; people can only move around the city using boats and helicopters. Local officials failed to order evacuations, so Houstonians have been forced from their homes as flood waters rose, and the death toll is horrific and rising.

But Houston had it coming. It is a miserably hot swamp where no one really wants to live. It embraced a “wild west” approach to growth, paved over wetlands, and refused to implement zoning, which would have lessened the impact of Harvey by requiring developers to mitigate the impacts of new projects. Moreover, it is the global center of the energy business, which is the biggest driver of climate change – one impact of which is the increased frequency and severity of hurricanes like Harvey.

Look at these pictures of flooded streets; families in boats, or shopping carts, or floating on inflatable mattresses; bridges that are totally submerged, and littered with abandoned cars. Check out these graphics showing how Houston has paved over much of the land, destroying wetlands and creating impermeable barriers and exacerbating the impact of major rainstorms. Read these interviews with experts who bemoan Houston’s lack of centralized planning, and who implore the city leaders in Houston to use their power to address the many failures that became evident during Hurricane Harvey.

These narratives, alas, are a combination of ignorance, and arrogance that tells the reader more about the narrative spinners’ flawed view of Houston than about the city itself.

Let’s start with some facts and perspective:

• Harvey is the wettest storm ever to hit the continental US. Over 50 inches of rainfall and 1 trillion gallons of water fell during the event. No one builds a church for Easter, or a gated community for the zombie apocalypse. It’s pretty naive to expect people to expect the unexpected.
• So far, there have been fewer than 50 storm-related deaths. Each of these deaths is tragic, but even if that number creeps higher, it is a stunning low fatality rate for such a major event in such a large city. The Houston region has more than 6.6 million people, and every year more than 40,000 of them die – so Hurricane Harvey increased the annual death tally by about 0.1%. Sad, but not catastrophic.
• An estimated 30,000 people have been forced from their homes. This is approximately 0.5% of the population of the Houston region. In other words, 99.5% of people in the Houston region have been able to stay in their homes. Unfortunate, but not catastrophic.
• The Trump Administration has estimated that 100,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. While it is unclear how that estimate was obtained – if 30,000 people were forced from their home, then probably 70-90% of those homes did not sustain enough damage to force an evacuation – the Houston region has more than 1.6 million housing units, so about 6% of homes sustained damage of some kind. Lamentable, but not catastrophic.
• Economic impact estimates are all over the map at this point; initial estimates were in the $30-40 billion range, but have been rising since then. Let’s say they end up being comparable to Superstorm Sandy, which caused about $70 billions of damage in today’s dollars. The Houston region GDP is about half a trillion dollars a year, so Harvey’s economic cost would be about 14% of our total economic output. Expensive, but not catastrophic.

A dispassionate weighing of these facts would tell you that while stressful events always help identify areas for improvement, by and large our infrastructure and leadership performed admirably well under extraordinary circumstances.

It other words, the facts would tell you that Harvey was not a catastrophe for Houston; it was our finest hour.

But the narrative spinners have an agenda: they want to assert that this event was an utter failure for Houston, and shame our city and county leadership into embracing centralized planning, and ultimately zoning. They believe in a top-down, expert-driven technocracy that rewards current real estate owners by actions that restrict new supply, raise property value (and therefore taxes), stifle opportunity and undermine human agency. As a life-long Houstonian, I would like to politely ask the narrative spinners to please pound sand.

Peter Drucker once said that culture eats strategy for breakfast, and Houston’s culture is one of opportunity. People come to this city to build a better life for themselves, to start and raise a family, and to do so with the support and encouragement of neighbors. This culture of opportunity means that Houstonians welcome newcomers, in a way that older or more status-conscious cities do not. Houston may not be a nice place to visit during the summer, but it is a great place to create a life all year round.

This culture really shines through during events like Hurricane Harvey. Despite what the narrative spinners would have you believe, we are not rugged individualists; we are rugged communitarians. We know that when times are tough, you must rely first on family, then friends, then neighbors, and then – and only if you’re one of the few, unfortunate folks who cannot rely on any of those three – on the government. And if we have family, friends, or neighbors who can help, reaching out for government support is actually taking resources away from those who need them more.

In short, the best governance to rely upon is self- governance.

When the storm hit, I saw these networks in action. People first took care of family – in my case, my five siblings and I were in regular communication, checking in on how each of us was weathering the storm. Good news: everyone came through pretty much unscathed.

Once it was clear that my family was OK, my wife and I began to focus on neighbors and friends. Yesterday, I spent several hours with neighbors clearing away trees that had fallen across streets in our neighborhood, making them unpassable. It was hard work – lots of chain sawing and branch hauling – and we were helped by a crew that was distributing power poles in our area. But folks just driving in the area would also stop and help, doing what they could, or just providing fellowship and encouragement.

One lady in the neighborhood brought us some chicken meatballs for lunch – no one asked her to do that, she just wanted to help however she could. (The meatballs were delicious – thanks Costco!)

Also, in our network of friends, there were a couple of families who were forced from their home. We worked together to find them places to stay, and today a group of about 40 men, women, and children went to their house today to box up and move out their valuables, throw away everything else, and tear out the damaged drywall. People brought tools, gloves, and a can-do attitude, and a job that might have taken weeks was finished in about 6 hours. Our friends now have their valuables with them in a rented home (found by another friend in our network), ready for the next step in returning to normalcy.

These stories are real, and not about heroes doing the unusual. They are commonplace and just the way things get done in Houston. If you have friends in Houston, just ask they will tell you similar stories.

Of course, leadership is important, and our regional leadership did great. Mayor Sylvester Turner and Judge Ed Emmett were both calm, deliberate, and stayed on task throughout the crisis. Governor Abbott and President Trump did their parts, but make no mistake about it – this was a local challenge that required top-notch response from local officials. And they did their jobs well.

Houston was able to absorb the wettest storm on record with remarkably little loss of life and property also because of good engineering, informed by the experience of previous storms. A good engineer designs systems that won’t fail when hit with an expected event; a great engineer designs systems that fail gracefully and non-catastrophically when hit with an unexpected event. Hats off to our great engineers.

However, a focus on Houston’s public officials or public infrastructure will lead you away from the more important truth: our response was driven by thousands of Houstonians who voluntarily stepped up to the challenge, and didn’t wait for some central authority to tell us what to do. The truth is that Houston’s culture was its biggest asset, a culture of mutual support that is extraordinary in a city of this size and diversity.

And this culture is not an accident; it the consequence of a system that was designed to be driven from the bottom-up, by regular folks, responding to needs on the ground rather than some kind of theoretical plan put together by experts with no stake in our future, or interest in our family, friends, or neighbors.

Of course, there is always room for improvement. By studying what happened, we will find ways to improve the system for the next storm – and there will always be a next storm. We learned a lot from Ike, Rita, and earlier storms. When I was a child, a couple of inches of rain would flood my neighborhood; today, that same neighborhood absorbed 25 inches of rain and made it through. We have come a long way.

Harvey was a difficult challenge, but not a catastrophe. However, it would be catastrophic for city leaders to accept the narrative spinners’ version of what happened in Houston. It is demonstrably wrong on all counts:

• Houston is a miserably hot swamp where no one really wants to live.

It’s hot during the summer, but it is pleasant the rest of the year. As this map shows, Houston actually gets more “pleasant days” than Miami, Raleigh-Durham, Chicago, Portland, or Phoenix. Forget your preconceptions for a moment, and answer a simple question: how could a place get to a population of 6.6 million if no one wanted to live there?

• It embraced a “wild west” approach to growth.

Houston’s approach is not the “wild west.” We have land use that is managed from the bottom up, through a system of deed restrictions that often include local homeowners’ associations to police those restrictions. What we don’t have is a top-down, expert-driven, bureaucratic system of centralized planning. As a result, it’s easier to develop real estate than most cities, which keeps real estate prices – especially housing prices – low relative to the rest of the country. It is actually a more sophisticated and economically efficient system than the antiquated politically-driven zoning system that generally favors entrenched interests over new entrants.

• Paved over wetlands

Over an 18 year period, Houston lost about 25,000 acres of wetlands. But this amounts to about 4 billion gallons of storm water detention capacity. As stated above, Harvey dumped about 1 trillion gallons; so the lost capacity represents about of 0.4% of Harvey’s deluge. But it’s also important to understand that the streets – a huge portion of the paved area – are used as detention, places to hold storm water temporarily when there is nowhere for it to drain. Houston’s strategy for many years has been to use streets as detention and runoff channels, the idea being that it is better to flood a street than a house. And the city’s performance under Harvey confirms the wisdom of that strategy.

• Refused to implement zoning, which would have lessened the impact of Harvey by requiring developers to mitigate the impacts of new projects.

This is the most ridiculous of all the claims made by the narrative spinners. Mayor Turner put it best: “Zoning wouldn’t have changed anything. We would have been a city with zoning that flooded.” Proof positive of this fact: one of the harder hit areas was Sugar Land, just south of Houston. Sugar Land has zoning. Alas, Harvey was unaware of that fact and dropped 30+ inches on them anyway (and they handled it well, just like the City of Houston, evidence that zoning was not correlated with impact).

• Moreover, it is the global center of the energy business, which is the biggest driver of climate change – one impact of which is the increased frequency and severity of hurricanes like Harvey.

Yes, Houston is the center of the energy business. But Houston’s energy industry is as much about natural gas as crude oil, and the increasing use of gas in power generation has led to a much-improved carbon dioxide picture in the US. If you believe that CO2 is causing climate change, you should be thanking the energy entrepreneurs in Houston for bringing cheap, clean natural gas to the nation. Moreover, the hypothesis that greenhouse gas emissions impact Atlantic hurricane activity is controversial; an official NOAA publication stated that “neither our model…nor our analyses…support the notion that greenhouse gas-induced warming leads to large increases in either tropical storm or overall hurricane numbers in the Atlantic.”

A final point about who pays for all this.

The narrative spinners have made a big deal about how federal funds will be needed to rebuild Houston, and therefore Houston must do what they say.

My take on this is: we are going to rebuild with or without you, so you are not the boss of us.

Most of the money from previous Texas hurricanes has come from private insurance. And, in some ways, this process of rebuilding restores a balance in the economy. For the past couple of decades, almost all homeowners have paid for insurance but few people make a claim. Most of that money sits on the balance sheet of big insurance companies to pay out future claims, and those companies often invest those dollars on Wall Street and real estate. That’s all fine – good, healthy commerce.

Now the time has come for the flow to go the other way. Big insurance companies will be paying out money to settle insurance claims, and most of that will go to working class Americans who will rebuild damaged property. Demand for labor will rise, as will wages, as the money starts to flow. The tilting of the economy away from physical labor toward the financial sector will reverse – maybe only temporarily, but it will still reverse.

Of course, if the federal government decides to give away money, I suppose people will sign up for it. But this madness eventually needs to end. The federal government is broke, and insisting that folks in Kansas or Vermont pay for a hurricane in Houston is silly on the face of it. This is not an invading army we’re talking about here. It’s a really bad storm. The Constitution doesn’t contain the words “storm,” “weather,” or “insurance.” Why are we continuing to twist its meaning to make Congress and the President look like heroes? If they want to help, let them help with their own time, talent, and treasure. Like the rest of us.

But we also don’t want to be suckers. If Washington DC decides not to help Houston, they should end it for everyone in the future. Which they should, in my opinion.

Bottom line: I believe we should celebrate the ability of the nation’s fourth largest city to absorb the wettest storm on record and bounce back with gusto. It is a testament to the culture of my hometown and the leadership that supports and nurtures that culture.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to get back to work. That wet drywall won’t remove itself.

Leo Linbeck III is a husband, father of 5, CEO of Aquinas Companies, Executive Chairman of Linbeck Group, a Houston-based institutional construction firm, Founder and Chairman of Fannin Innovation Studio, a biomedical startup studio, and Lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He was also the Founding Chairman, and is currently the Vice Chairman, of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism, a Houston-based think tank.

The floods of 1929 and 1935 in the White Oak and Buffalo Bayou watersheds devastated downtown Houston.  They led to the creation of the Harris County Flood Control District and the Congressional authorization and appropriation of federal dollars to the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to devise a plan to address flooding the Houston area.

The 1940 plan included Addicks, Barker, and White Oak reservoirs; a diversion levee along Cypress Creek (to prevent its water from overflowing into the areas draining to Addicks and Barker; the channelization of about 7 miles of Buffalo Bayou (between what is now Highway 6 and about S. Piney Point); a 2 mile long Brickhouse Gully Bypass Channel; a 25 mile long North Canal; and a 35 mile long South Canal (see plan below).

Can you identify which parts of the plan were constructed and which parts were not?

The levees built to create Addicks and Barker are not like traditional dams. Traditional dams, in places where the ground surface elevation changes radically (think Hoover Dam on the Colorado River near Las Vegas), dams can be 100’s of feet tall and made from reinforced concrete.  The water pressure against the bottom of the Hoover Dam at max pool depth is 255 pounds per square inch.  Addicks and Barker are very squat comparatively. They are made from compacted layers of dirt in a backwards facing letter “C” configuration.  They were built on ground that gently slopes to the northwest, but they were built to have horizontal tops at the same or similar elevations (except the ends).  The ends were tapered to meet the ground.  These ends were covered in a protective layer of concrete so the tapered portions could serve as emergency spillways in the event that the water collected behind the levees got too high.  Each taper is at a different elevation to make sure the rate of spillage only gradually increases (since all of the water is going to the same bayou) instead of gushing out both sides at once.  See the diagram below.

The following two diagrams provide a close-up, cross-sectional view of one of the levees. The first shows the viewing direction of each of the cross-sections, A-A and B-B.

The second shows the actual views, which hypothetical water levels illustrating the emergency spillway operation.

Many have asked me why residential and commercial development was allowed to occur to the west of the impoundment area. I think there were and are a variety of reasons.

First, the impoundment area was originally sized with the expectation that the blue conveyance systems shown in the graphic above would be constructed and that the White Oak Reservoir would be constructed to reduce the volume of water conveyed by the lower section of Buffalo Bayou. This led to the federal government only buying the acreage they thought they needed – given the discharge capacity of the blue conveyance system.

Second, as time wore on, and the city grew, the privately owned land to the west of each reservoir was not purchased by any government entity for the purpose of flood damage mitigation.  If this had been done, the land could have been set aside for that purpose.

Third, if there is one thing I’ve learned about Texans, after living here for 20 years, they value their individual property rights. This culture made it unlikely that any local government would restrict land use in the land upstream of the reservoir land.

Fourth, our laws and regulations governing real estate transactions don’t appear to require disclosure of information about flood risk unless the risk is equal to or greater than a 1% annual chance of flooding. This means that thousands of people bought homes in the area just west of the federally owned land and did not know about the flood risk associated with those locations.  Although the risk is less than 1% each year (which, as I written elsewhere, gives your home a 26% chance of flooding during a 30 year mortgage), it’s not zero.

Others have asked me why the rest of the 1940 plan was not built. I don’t know the actual answer to that question, but I suspect World War II may have had something to do with it. Also, it’s possible that some combination of local funding and Congressional funding did not materialize as planned.

Over the last week there’s been some discussion about making the levees higher, excavating the inundation pool areas deeper, or a combination of both. What do you think about these ideas?

[Update on September 7, 2017 – Added National Academy of Sciences Report on Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change]

I wonder if Harvey was caused (or made worse) by climate change?

Now that I have your attention….

I previously have written a bit on whether or not certain studies of rainfall history suggest that extreme events are becoming larger or more frequent.  Here’s a quote from my op-ed in Trib-Talk from February 2017:

Our region has also been looking at the effect of climate change on rainfall patterns. In March 2016, Harris County joined a national study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA] to recalculate the 1 percent storm size for Texas using rainfall records from a longer period of time. Similar work completed for the southeast and southwest regions of the country [by NOAA] showed that rainfall depths over time did not have statistically significant trends up or down — i.e., no climate-change effect was observed on those types of storms.

Since I reported on what NOAA did in New Mexico and Louisiana, many folks have apparently taken this to mean that I don’t believe in climate change. To set the record straight, here’s what I think about climate change and how we might deal with it.

Climate change will require us to do three things, in amounts that relate to each other:

1. Mitigate: Reduce the amount of carbon we emit. Hopefully we will do this using market forces and creativity. This might be done by establishing a cap on emissions and a price for the right to emit a certain mass of carbon. This would then create a business case for reducing carbon emissions, sequestering carbon, or otherwise controlling carbon and then selling the right to emit some.
2. Adapt:  Change our planning and design approach for infrastructure, development, and just about everything else we do, to account for anticipated future conditions. This could be wind speeds, rainfall intensities, rainfall depths, rainfall frequencies, sea levels, solar radiation, temperature, etc. Think where and how we grow food. How we get around.  How we plan development.  The size and materials used for infrastructure.  This also might also include retrofitting existing systems.
3. Suffer: Deal with the social, environmental, and economic consequences of the anticipated changes, many of which will be negative and will be felt mostly by lower income people. This might be water scarcity, flooding, new diseases, sea level rise, storms, more costly food, more costly transportation, etc.  Of course suffering will cost money also.

The amount of energy, thought, and time we put into each of these three things will depend on how much energy, thought, and time we put into the other two.  If we don’t mitigate or adapt, than suffering will increase.  If we mitigate a lot, then the required adaptation effort will go down a bit and the suffering will diminish.  This is not a new way to conceptualize our situation. I’m stealing this from some other much more well informed people.

Now, lets focus on development and drainage in the Houston area.

If you review historic rainfall amounts up through today, you can see statistically significant increasing trend lines for smaller rainfall amounts. For example, the number of days per year experiencing more than 3″ of rain is increasing over time. This suggests that the number of 12″ days or 13″ days (about equal to the current 1% annual chance event) is increasing, even though those events are so rare we can’t see the trend in only 70 years of data. That’s because, by definition, we would expect to only see one such event in 100 years of data. Hard to see a time series trend in one data point, right?

Now if we see increasing trends in 3″ days (which are very common), 4″ days, and 5″ days, then we can extrapolate the data for both smaller storms and larger storms out to any future year to see what kind of rainfall we can expect and what kind of stormwater management and floodplain management we should undertake. Thanks to Matt Berg and Katharine Hayhoe for this insight.

So in Houston we currently design stormwater systems to handle 12″ days, which is the depth of rain that has a 1% chance of occurring every year (based on the last time we calculated this value).  Let’s say we update our analysis of rainfall data and we find that the current 1% annual chance is actually a 14″ day.  Let’s further assume that we estimate that the 1% annual chance event in the year 2067 will be 16″ day (based on our extrapolated increasing trend line).  If these assumptions were true then we have the technical information to inform some important policy choices.

First, we would need to decide what level of risk we would like to use to design new infrastructure and developments. Perhaps we would want to change from a 1% annual chance level of service to a 0.5% annual chance level of service? This would mean that our designs would need to accommodate more rain in a single day. Building to a lower risk level would require a higher initial investment, but might reduce overall life-cycle costs, especially if repair and replacement probabilities were factored in.

Second, we would need to decide, based on the facility’s design life, what future conditions we should consider. A facility in operation in 2067 that needed a 1% annual chance risk level should be designed to handle the hypothetical 16″ day mentioned above.  A facility designed for a 10 year life might be designed to handle the current or short term predicted increase in the 1% annual chance rainfall.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we would need to find the money to invest in retrofitting or modifying the older portions of our city that don’t currently meet our existing 1% annual chance rain event, much less the 1% annual chance event predicted to occur in 2067.

We can figure this stuff out. We just need to do it.

Oh, what about Harvey, which delivered four day rainfall totals depicted in the image below, from Harris County Flood Control District’s Flood Warning System.

Well there is an entire science used to determine how to attribute a particular outcome to certain input variables. Attributing any particular event to human-caused climate change depends upon the time scale and geographic size of the event being studied. I direct you to this paper about whether the August 2016 flooding in Louisiana was due to climate change and to the National Academy of Sciences report Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change for additional insights and details.

I tend to think that human-caused climate change increased the probability of Harvey occurring, but I personally don’t have a way to estimate the magnitude of that increase. Perhaps some statistics experts and climate scientists can help us out?

[Update on September 7, 2017 – Added National Academy of Sciences Report on Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change]

[Direct quote re-posted from The Atlantic…]

August 5, 2017

Can Congress Bring the National Flood Insurance Program Above Water?

The debate over too-low premiums and repetitive payouts grinds on, even as the thunderheads roll in and the water levels rise.

By Michelle Cottle

Get those sandbags and storm shutters ready. Peak hurricane season is bearing down on the Atlantic coast. From New Orleans to the Jersey Shore, nothing focuses the mind quite like a looming megastorm. And while this time of year is always meteorologically suspenseful, now it’s even more so. That’s because among the many, many things Congress is struggling to cross off its to-do list is the reform and reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).

As problematic government programs go, the NFIP is a doozy. Established in 1968, it handles some 5 million policies nationwide. Unfortunately, these days it collects less in premiums and surcharges than it shells out in claims and other expenses, leaving the Treasury Department—read: taxpayers—to plug the holes. Which means every time some neighborhood in Galveston or Daytona winds up underwater (Texas, Florida, and Louisiana account for more than half of all policies), the rest of the nation effectively bails them out. Not that coastal areas bear all the blame—rivers have a nasty habit of overflowing as well. Last August, an ugly storm parked itself over Baton Rouge for several days, dropping upwards of 20 inches of rain that caused $10 billion in damages. All told, the FEMA-managed NFIP is neck-deep in debt to the tune of $24.6 billion.

The structural, some even say moral, flaws of NFIP are vast and varied. 

[Direct quote re-posted from The Atlantic…]

[Read more]

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.

The Set Up

Say you have a contract to purchase land at a great price in a great location for a new development project. The financial projections for the project (both costs and revenues) look great and the internal rate of return meets your investment requirements. All looks promising, except, during due diligence, someone mentions that there might be wetlands in the planned development area.

What to do next depends on how much risk you and your financial backers can stomach. It is a violation of federal law to impact waters of the United States without a permit. If your project is self-financed and you are a risk taker, you might decide to move forward with little to no field work and coordination with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). If you have a traditional loan or work for a publicly traded company you might move forward after more extensive field work and coordination with the USACE, including a permitting step.

Wetlands assessments can range from an inexpensive Desktop Evaluation up to a full, Wetlands Delineation using USACE procedures and forms. For a 500 acre, partially forested tract, these services might range from several thousand dollars to the high two figures. The amount you spend should depend upon your tolerance for risk and how much capital must be committed at that moment in the process.

Desktop Evaluation

A Desktop Evaluation considers readily available historical and current aerial photos, floodplain maps, and the US Fish and Wildlife’s National Wetlands Inventory (NWI) maps.  This is the least expensive method, but its also is the least accurate and least defensible method should questions arise after the development is constructed.  A Desktop Evaluation is not sufficient to secure an official ruling from the USACE on the regulatory status of the wetlands. NWI wetland polygons may or may not represent an actual wetland due to the age of the satellite imagery used to produce them and because ground surface vegetation and hydrology may be obscured.  Historical aerial photographs are also reviewed and they inexpensively provide great insight about the potential for wetlands to be present; however, they are no substitute for direct observation of site conditions.

A Desktop Evaluation is typically a good choice prior to any land purchase. The results can help give you a rough qualitative sense of whether you should spend a bit more investigating what’s really there and how the wetlands might constrain your land plan and revenue forecast. It can also help give you a rough idea about what kind of permitting might be necessary and the schedule impact that might have.

Wetlands Assessment

The next level of investment involves a site visit by a professional wetlands scientist to observe the site directly and to examine the soils, plants, and hydrology in a few locations. This is often called a Wetlands Assessment.  It does not comply with the full delineation requirements imposed by the USACE, however, it does allow the consultant to provide an opinion regarding the location and size of wetlands on the property.  After a Wetlands Assessment the consultant will typically provide a brief report with a refined site map, an estimate of the size and location of wetlands on the property, an opinion about whether they might be under federal jurisdiction (and might trigger permitting if unavoidably impacted), and initial thoughts about permitting options (if anticipated to be required).

The results of a Wetlands Assessment reduces your risk exposure, provides more information on which to base a purchase decision, helps guide land planning decisions, and helps refine project financial projections. The results of a Wetlands Assessment can sometimes justify walking away from a project, especially if extensive federally regulated wetlands are present and permitting unavoidable impacts would be too time consuming or if the replacement of lost wetlands would be too costly.  The results of a Wetlands Assessment can sometimes justify proceeding with the project without USACE coordination or permitting if the Wetlands Assessment shows no unavoidable impacts that would require permitting.

 Wetlands Delineation

A Wetlands Delineation evaluates soils, hydrology, and vegetation at multiple locations in and around the boundary of each wetland feature to accurately identified the size, location, and shape of each wetland area on the site.  The process is defined in detail in national USACE Guidance (with regional supplements) and the results are presented in USACE forms.  This is the most expensive approach, however, it accurately and precisely defines the location and size of each area of the project that is likely to be subject to federal regulation, in the consultant’s opinion.

A Wetlands Delineation is an extensive study that reduces your risk and liability exposure even more than a Wetlands Assessment.  A Wetlands Delineation also allows you to more confidently estimate the size of any unavoidable wetland impacts your development might create. The accurate wetland map can be used to refine the land plan to avoid and minimize impacts to wetlands. The revised land plan can then be used to update the project financial projections.

Jurisdictional Determination

Not all wetlands or creeks are “Waters of the United States” subject to federal regulation. Your consultant can provide a professional opinion regarding the status of the wetlands and waters on your property; however, the USACE is the only entity that has the legal authority and power to officially determine whether a wetland or waterbody is subject to federal regulation. Please see this post for a primer on how they do this.

If you elect to conduct a Wetlands Delineation, that detailed information can be submitted to the USACE, along with an “Approved Jurisdictional Determination Form” to ask the USACE to verify the delineation and to make a determination regarding the jurisdictional status of all wetlands and waters on your property.

There are actually two kinds of determinations.  An Approved Jurisdictional Determination (AJD) is a final statement as to the status of all wetlands and waters on your site. It is used in cases where there may be some wetlands or waterbodies on your site that are likely not federally regulated, because, for example, they are isolated, or were constructed in the past, or for some other reason. An AJD (hopefully) confirms your consultant’s opinion and gives you permission to impact certain wetlands that are not federally regulated while protecting others that are. This reduces your risk and liability exposure because the entity with the sole legal authority to make the decision, makes the decision in writing, in the form of a “determination letter.”

The second kind of determination is a Preliminary Jurisdictional Determination (PJD). A PJD is typically used if you want to save time and you’ve determined that your project can be developed without any impacts to wetlands or water features and still be financially viable. The PJD, in effect concedes that all wetlands and water features on the property are waters of the United States and that unavoidable impacts to them must be permitted.

A future post will provide an overview of the permitting options offered by the USACE to project sponsors that have unavoidable impacts to waters of the United States.

On July 11, 2017 Leah Binkovitz, a staff writer for the Rice Kinder Institute for Urban Research, published a story on The Urban Edge blog entitled: “Why the 100-Year Floodplain Needs to be Rethought.” This post provides some comments.

The story states that “areas inside the 100-year floodplain have a 1 percent chance of flooding each year and are required to buy federally-regulated insurance. But that measure has been increasingly called into question, along with the role of the flood insurance program.”

The story correctly notes that floodplain managers in the United States have used the 1% annual chance threshold to define the arbitrary boundary between high risk and low risk areas along bayous and rivers since 1968. It is policy decision we’ve made, not a technical one.

It is not true that all structures with an annual chance of flooding of 1% or greater are required to buy flood insurance. There is no law or regulation that requires that. It is almost always required by the lender, in order to replace the structure, which serves as collateral for the loan, if it is damaged in a flood. Owners of structures with an annual chance of flooding lower than 1% are also not required to obtain insurance by regulation or by lenders; but many can and do.

We should encourage discussion about whether the 1% risk level is a good dividing line between “high risk” and “low risk” areas, when, obviously, the risk gradually declines as you move away from each creek or bayou. We should also encourage discussion about the exposure to risk from flooding which occurs in areas outside of bayou floodplains. Local streets and storm drains in neighborhoods can only handle a certain depth of rainfall over a certain period of time. If that, so called, “level of service,” is exceeded, or if drains are clogged or broken, local flooding can occur. Our policy discussion should also consider the public’s risk tolerance and their willingness to pay to reduce their risk exposure.

If we decided to make the policy choice to define the high risk areas as those with a 0.5% or a 0.1% annual chance of flooding, and mandated the purchase of insurance on homes or structures in those areas, what would happen to the size of the floodplain and the community cost burden? It would get much bigger. It would encompass many more homes and structures. Flooding events would trigger more claims and much larger insurance payouts. All of these facts would drastically increase the cost of flood insurance or the cost to federal tax payers, especially in flat, coastal areas like Houston. [This might even be considered analogous to the way the Affordable Care Act mandated the purchase of health insurance so that healthy people (those with a low flood risk) would help subsidize the less healthy people or those with pre-existing conditions (those with a high flood risk).]

The story then describes how many insured losses are located outside the 100-year floodplain, quoting from a study, published online earlier this year and in print in the August issue of Natural Hazards Review.

Why would so many homes and businesses located outside of the 100-year floodplain have flood insurance? Many people obtain insurance on a voluntary basis because it is very inexpensive when compared to risk of loss and the cost of such losses. It is inexpensive because it is subsidized by the federal tax payer (you and me).

The story suggests that floodplain models “don’t take into account changing land use, like loss of wetlands or additional impervious surfaces — both important factors in the fast-growing Houston metropolitan area.”

Floodplains are defined using the most up to date and current information about rainfall intensity and depths, topography, land use, and land cover available at the time. Floodplain models are created by licensed professional engineers using current data and then formally adopted by floodplain administrators. These modeling efforts are extensive and relatively costly, therefore, they are not broadly updated very often. Changes in the watershed outside the floodplain are not addressed until there is restudy of the floodplain associated with that watershed and bayou. So its true we don’t have “real-time” watershed models and floodplain maps. They are only accurate for a short time after they are published in a fast growing watershed. In watersheds without significant development activity, they are accurate for a much longer period of time.

Floodplain models and maps are, however, frequently updated as a result of new development or other changes inside the existing floodplain through a process called a “Conditional Letter of Map Revision (CLOMR)” and a “Letter of Map Revision (LOMR).” The CLOMR is a prediction of the increase or decrease in the base flood elevation and areal extent, before to the project being built. The LOMR revises the map after the project is built. This process allows floodplain managers to update the model as a result of floodplain changes and to inform the affected land owners and communities know about the pending and actual changes. Project Brays is a great local example of this process illustrating the reduction of the floodplain as a result of channel changes.

Wholesale updates of the model for a particular watershed occur less frequently mainly due to funding constraints.  Floodplain managers would conduct these updates more frequently is funding was made available.

So discussions about our risk tolerance, our willingness to pay for reduced risks, our willingness to invest in more frequently updated risk assessments, and who bears the costs of floodplain management and losses are all important.  What do you think?

[July 27, 2017: The proposed rule has been published today’s Federal Register. Comments are due August 28, 2017.]

[July 21, 2017 Update: If you’ve been checking the Federal Register each day you may already know that, surprisingly, this rule has not yet been published.]

On June 27, 2017 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) posted the pre-publication version of their pending Proposed Rule entitled: “Definition of ‘Waters of the United States’ – Recodification of Pre-existing Rules.”  Here’s an extremely brief summary of what has led up to this rule and a short summary of what it proposes to do.

The definition of the term “waters of the United States” — or “WOTUS” for short — has been the subject of much litigation over the years. Its definition determines if a private party needs U.S. Government permission (in the form of a permit issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) to impact wet areas on their property. The term is used to define “navigable waters” in federal law.

On one end of the spectrum there are traditionally navigable waters used for interstate commerce. These are unquestionably WOTUS.

In the middle of the spectrum there are wetlands adjacent to navigable waters. There are tributaries of navigable waters. There are tributaries of tributaries of navigable waters. There are even wetlands adjacent to these various types of tributaries.

On the other end of the spectrum there are small, isolated areas of standing water, soils, and vegetation (true wetlands) located far away from any navigable waterway.

Which of these is subject to Federal regulation?

That question has been addressed by U.S. Supreme Court cases, EPA Guidance, and regulations. These may be summarized and simplified as follows:

• Riverside (1985): Wetlands adjacent to a navigable water are WOTUS.
• Solid Waste Authority of Northern Cook County  (SWANCC) (2001): Isolated wetlands used by migratory birds (thus triggering an intrastate commerce activity) are NOT sufficient to make an isolated wetlands a WOTUS. A “significant nexus” between the isolated water and a navigable waterway is required for waters to be WOTUS.
• Rapanos (2006): Relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water, that are connected to traditional navigable waters as well as wetlands with a continuous surface connection to such water bodies are WOTUS. Also aquatic features or wetlands must have a “significant nexus” to a WOTUS to be considered a WOTUS. In practice, this made most isolated wetlands, those not adjacent or abutting a navigable water, those not in the floodplain of a waterway, and those not a tributary of a navigable water, typically NOT WOTUS.
• Final Clean Water Rule (2015): Created a prescriptive “significant nexus” test that had the effect of making many isolated wetlands WOTUS.

U.S. Supreme Court AT THE TIME OF THE RAPANOS DECISION (2006).

The Trump administration views the Clean Water Rule as inappropriately extending federal jurisdiction to wetlands and aquatic resources beyond those that would be regulated under the Rapanos decision and associated guidance. This view has led to the proposed rule that was just released. Quoting from the pre-publication Federal Register text:

In this proposed rule, the agencies would rescind the 2015 Clean Water Rule and replace it with a recodification of the regulatory text that governed the legal regime prior to the 2015 Clean Water Rule and that the agencies are currently implementing under the court stay, informed by applicable guidance documents (e.g., the 2003 and 2008 guidance documents, as well as relevant memoranda and regulatory guidance letters), and consistent with the SWANCC and Rapanos Supreme Court decisions, applicable case law, and longstanding agency practice. The proposal retains exclusions from the definition of “waters of the United States” for prior converted cropland and waste treatment systems, both of which existed before the 2015 regulations were issued. Nothing in this proposed rule restricts the ability of States to protect waters within their boundaries by defining the scope of waters regulated under State law more broadly than the federal law definition.

Once the proposed rule is published in the Federal Register the public will have 30 days to submit comments. I’ll update this post with a link to the docket when it becomes available.

[July 27, 2017: The proposed rule has been published today’s Federal Register. Comments are due August 28, 2017.]

[July 21, 2017 Update: If you’ve been checking the Federal Register each day you may already know that, surprisingly, this rule has not yet been published.]

Declaration of Independence

Note: The following text is a transcription of the Stone Engraving of the parchment Declaration of Independence (the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum.) The spelling and punctuation reflects the original.

In Congress [Philadelphia, Pennsylvania], July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Independence Hall, Philadelphia, PA. Source: National Park Service.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
• He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
• He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
• He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
• He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
• He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
• He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
• He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
• For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
• For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
• For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
• For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
• For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
• For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
• For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
• For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
• For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
• He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
• He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
• He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
• He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

[See the source page for the list of signatories.]