SHOULD FLOODS BE CALLED “NATURAL” DISASTERS OR ARE THEY MAN-MADE?
We have the opportunity to prevent floods by affordably capturing and utilizing rainwater. But will political and cultural inertia prevail?
July 29, 2022. Eight Kentuckians so far have lost their lives in eastern Kentucky’s worst flood event in recent memory.
Of course, the governor referred to this in passing as a “natural” disaster. But is it natural, or man-made?
If you wanted to set the stage for floods, how would you do it? You would design for drainage not hydration. You would treat rainwater as a nuisance, not a resource. You would mow endlessly, compulsively, for no particular reason and at great expense.
You would eliminate plant matter and organic matter. You would penalize people for native plant gardens.
We have the opportunity—at the local level—to create cool microclimates simply by changing our approach to rainwater. Is it a resource or a nuisance? Is it a valuable asset or a liability?
Instead of giving expensive tax holidays to out-of-town corporations that play us against other communities, and drain the treasury, we could put people and local businesses to work building things that capture rainwater.
We could grow more and mow less. Plants and trees naturally capture rainwater, hold onto it, and then release it gradually into the air in an evaporative process that cools the local climate during the hottest months.
We could amend our landscapes with organic matter such as leaves, limbs, logs and wood chips, which not only capture rainwater but provide habitat for underground organisms such as earthworms that virtually define healthy soil.
Healthy soil is the biggest “water tank” of them all. It has the capacity to hold massive amounts of water, releasing it gradually and gently into our streams and rivers, but only after filtering it and making it much more suited to human and animal consumption than the sewage we send rushing into the storm drains.
We could also capture the water that comes off our roofs and pavement.
Louisville recently spent $200 million on a pipe to deal with flood waters. Wouldn’t it be smarter to spend that kind of money to prevent flooding?
Sadly, these proposed changes will face cultural and political inertia at every step.
But the cost-benefit analysis weighs heavily in favor of treating water as a resource, not a nuisance. We need to capture rainwater and hydrate our landscapes, instead of causing the floods we lament.
https://www.wdrb.com/news/heavy-rains-cause-catastrophic-flooding-in-eastern-kentucky-national-guard-mobilized/article_62bff1f8-0e73-11ed-a8e2-87174c2e8df4.html