People can be their own worst enemies, and too often put people in charge who will ignore them for their own personal gain.
Texans value their freedom, no matter how destructive that might be.
Houston, one of the largest cities in the United States, is a city that grew without regard to zoning ordinances.
No one was going to tell someone what they could or could not do with their own land.
Forget how anything could affect your neighbors.
Ignoring its own topography, the city built itself up without acknowledging that its soil would not allow general water absorption. The bayous had formed because that is where rain water could collect since the ground would not take it in.
Zoning laws could have limited how much and where building was allowed so that water could move and not get trapped where it fell.
When the reservoirs were built in the 1940s they were out on the pasture land with no houses around, so if they overflowed the water could meander until it was spread out, or until it found a place to collect away from the city. But, as the city grew and there was fast money to be made in real estate, houses began crowding in the reservoirs, so any overflow had no place to go but into streets and houses.
When a French company, Arkema, wanted to build a chemical plant in Houston, it got regulators to delay new regulations designed to improve safety procedures. This was backed by top Texas Republican lawmakers who got some of the tens of millions of dollars in the form of federal election campaign donations from chemical industry donors.
When a West, Texas, chemical plant exploded in 2013 killing 15 people, the Obama administration attempted to raise chemical plant safety standards by increasing EPA regulations that dealt with safety and transparency at chemical plants.
Not in Texas, though, if the politician could help it.
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Arkema had objected to the rules because they could “likely add significant new costs and burdens to the corporate audit process” , and the company wanted to avoid using “inherently safer technology” that would have them “substitute less hazardous substances” and “simplify covered processes in order to make accidental releases less likely or the impacts of such releases less severe.”
Pruitt of the EPA, who hates regulations, went along with this.
Well, those releases are happening now.
Because of Hurricane Harvey, Arkema’s Crosby plant is spewing caustic smoke into the air around the town.
Five of Arkema’s six production plants in Texas, which are near the coast and in the Houston area, are being affected by the flooding which is raising the prospect of additional explosions due to flooding.
So besides allowing chemical plants to endanger people now that they are bring affected by the flooding, the uncontrolled building and lack of zoning ordinances and regulations has resulted in overbuilding, over paving, poor drainage, and wetland destruction.
And we have the huge floods and people without homes.
Greed is demanding payback.
The state that boasts of its independent spirit, that wanted to secede from the union because they are too independent to follow federal laws, and who won’t let anyone impose on them, are now needful of help from all those other states and are relying on the socialism they have so strongly condemned. Independence only lasts so long as you don’t find yourself needing other people’s help.
Perhaps, after seeing this, other cities, who confused freedom with greed and stupidity, will catch on and change course before they face a big test.