Americans Are in Total Denial About Flooding | The New Republic

…Source: Americans Are in Total Denial About Flooding | The New Republic

…The bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by Congress and signed by the president last fall is, according to the American Flood Coalition, a “historic” investment in flood resilience: $34.7 billion. The law authorizes money to upgrade aging sewer systems and improve coastal resilience, including by restoring wetlands. It also provides numerous channels to get funding to local communities for flood-control projects….

…As big as it sounds, the infrastructure bill will barely dent the ballooning need: The Army Corps of Engineers, which gets $17.1 billion for flood resilience projects, currently has a $96 billion backlog. Still, it’s is a bigger start than we’ve ever seen.

…Good Democratic leadership would not overlook the centrist and Republican sabotage of Build Back Better but would also brag more about the benefits to communities from the resilience measures in the bipartisan infrastructure bill. The flood funding in this bill will save lives and millions of homes. It will save countless households, farms, and communities from ruin. Such investment also has broad economic benefits: Johns Hopkins researchers found that every billion invested in flood resilience creates 40,000 jobs (that’s not counting jobs saved when a store, restaurant, beach, or factory is not destroyed by flooding). Renewable energy gets more attention for its job-creation potential, but saving us all from flood damage is also meaningful and potentially well-paid work.

…The people who are boasting about flood resilience aren’t who you’d expect. When she voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill, Texas Congresswoman Kay Granger called it a “socialist plan.” She did not mean that nicely. But The Los Angeles Times reported that when the Army Corps of Engineers announced it was using some of its money from the bill for a $403 million flood-control project in her Fort Worth district, Granger was quick to cheer it on. Other Republicans who publicly hated on the bill and voted against it have gone so far as to take credit for its flood-control initiatives, among them Louisiana’s Representative Steve Scalise, who put out a press release highlighting $400 million in funding for such projects….