Flooding and Critical Infrastructure

The Dog’s Ear Blog is back, showing logic to the  illogical.

Today’s first post deals with flooding and critical infrastructure risks. As many of you know or may not know the climate of the world is changing. Like it or not. President Biden has made climate change and infrastructure two of his top priorities. Why do members of congress refused to work with the president to invest in the future, even if it is detrimental to their own states welfare? And don’t say it’s about the money.

Recently First Street Foundation, the science and technology a nonprofit organization which deals with the problem of flooding came out on October 11, 2021 with a press release from a report titled “ National Resilience Report Findings that 25% of All Critical Infrastructure and 23% of Roads have Flood Risk” in this country.

Here is part of the report.

Roughly 25%, or 1 in 4 of all critical infrastructure in the country are at risk of becoming inoperable today, which represents roughly 36,000 facilities. Further to this, 23% of all road segments in the country (nearly 2 million miles of road), are at risk of becoming impassable. Additionally, 20% of all commercial properties (919,000), 17% of all social infrastructure facilities (72,000), and 14% of all residential properties (12.4 million) also have operational risk.

Over the next 30 years, due to the impacts of climate change, an additional 1.2 million residential properties, 66,000 commercial properties, 63,000 miles of roads, 6,100 pieces of social infrastructure and 2,000 pieces of critical infrastructure will also have flood risk that would render them inoperable, inaccessible, or impassable.

The highest concentration of community risk exists in Louisiana, Florida, Kentucky, and West Virginia, with 17 of the top 20 most at risk counties in the U.S. (85%) residing in these 4 states. Louisiana alone accounts for 8 of the top 20 most at risk counties (30%) and is home to the most at risk  county in the country, Cameron Parish.