Regulations Eliminated by Trump Are Needed Now to Rebuilt After Irma
Introduction:
President Obama instituted a regulation for builders dealing with the federal government that made them built not just according to standards but the houses, buildings, and bridges to withstand flood and winds. This was one of the first regulation Trump proudly took off the books calling the name Obama a couple of times like everything done under him had to be torn down.
Florida probably remembers what happened under Andrew storm in which older houses withstood the wind and the new houses and condos right next to them were blown away.
The answer was that builders were no longer building to up to codes because they were bribing inspectors but still they realized the winds from Andrew were too strong for even building under the existing code. The answer was to 'up' the code to a practical level making the regulations stiffer and the fines too.
The government in Florida decided to change the codes and make them stricter for the next time. The next time is already's come a few times but the latest just came and even though they had problems with flooding because they have not spent the money fixing the old infra-structures but buildings and houses made to code survived. Obviously, that does not include trailer homes for obvious reasons and because they are given a pass to built under different codes as houses and buildings. Most of them are not even built in Florida but in Alabama.
Smart regulations keep us safe! To start eliminating regulation without thinking how much is going to cost in lives and treasury is irresponsible and in some cases criminal. Rebuilding is always more expensive than replacing windows; having people injured and killed is the maximum expense in the way we built.
For Trump to promise to eliminate most regulations without knowing what they are and how much
it would cost if they were not there is really political and it makes an America dependent on luck.
Facts:
Just a week before Harvey slammed into the Texas coast as a Category 4 hurricane triggering unprecedented flooding in Houston, President Donald Trump revoked an Obama-era executive order that required strict building standards for all federal building projects.
Trump signed the executive order on Aug. 15, putting an end to the Obama standards meant to address climate-induced sea level rise. Trump said he was revoking Obama's order to "streamline the current process" for infrastructure projects, according to a government official.
"We're going to get infrastructure built quickly, inexpensively, relatively speaking, and the permitting process will go very, very quickly," Trumps said at the time. "It’s going to be a very streamlined process, and by the way, if it doesn’t meet environmental safeguards, we’re not going to approve it."
On Saturday, Harvey made landfall near Rockport, east of Corpus Christi. In the days since, feet of torrential rain have fallen on Houston, leading to more than 2,000 water rescues. The storm has killed at least five people and it will be months before the region recovers from devastation and flooding. The damages will be in the billions.
The Obama-era standards required public structures such as subsidized housing and water treatment plants to be built at least 2 feet above the 100-year flood standard, the Washington Post noted. Other more critical structures, like hospitals, were required to be built 3 feet above that line.
Obama signed the order the same week that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released a post-Sandy report examining flood risks for some 31,000 miles of the North Atlantic coastline, finding that the "flood risk is increasing for coastal populations and supporting infrastructure."
Nearly 1.9 million homes in the United States worth a combined $882 billion are at risk from coastal flooding, with more than 900,000 of those situated in Florida, according to an analysis by Zillow based on data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The Trump administration has long complained that the permitting process has gotten out of control and vowed to simplify the process.
Scott Edwards, co-director of the justice project at the Washington-based environmental group Food and Water Watch, said the decision could be dangerous and lead to rubber- stamping permits without proper scrutiny, according to Bloomberg.
Rafael Lemaitre, former director of public affairs at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told Reuters that Trump was undoing "the most significant action taken in a generation" to protect infrastructure from the ever-increasing risk from climate change.
"Eliminating this requirement is self-defeating. We can either build smarter now or put taxpayers on the hook to pay exponentially more when it floods. And it will," he said.
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