Congress: take time to think

Posted on January 6, 2013 by recoverydiva

A recent editorial in the Washington Post suggests that the nearly $50 B. bill regarding recovery from H. Sandy needs to be carefully thought through and debated. See: Stopping the Sandy Steamroller, January 5. The final paragraph states:

If lawmakers are truly concerned with disaster victims, the next thing they will do is act more comprehensively on some of Sandy’s lessons. The National Flood Insurance Program badly requires reform. And Congress will need a more coherent, long-term strategy for the nation’s infrastructure — one passed after due consideration, not under the pressure of time-sensitive disaster aid.

On Jan 7th, from HS Wire, here is more information about what the next Congressional action will be and the politics that accompanies it.

New: Roundup of Recovery Resources (2010-2013)

Posted on January 5, 2013 by recoverydiva

NEW PRODUCT! For readers of the Recovery Diva blog who count on us for the latest quality resources, we have a great new product for you. You’ll be glad to know that we have compiled roughly 3 years of recovery resources and organized them by topic, to facilitate your ability to search and reference the resources. The authors are Elizabeth Todak, Research Assistant, and Claire B. Rubin, the Diva herself.

Our new product is essentially an index and bibliography of all of the key documents described during the past 3 1/2 years in the more than 900 postings from the Diva.

This 23-page Roundup of Recovery Resources provides citations and direct URLs to significant reports, studies, and other sources. You can quickly obtain a copy, via email, for a contribution of $25. or more to the RecoveryDiva blog — just use the donation button in the top right corner of the homepage: http://recoverydiva.com.

Even if you do not want the roundup document, please consider donating to help pay for the research assistants who help augment the work of the Diva. Presently two research assistants are at work on your behalf, as well as some volunteer book reviewers. Please help keep the blog going in 2014.

NOTE:

A review copy is available if you are an educator considering using this document as a resource for a course. A special price is available for orders of 10 or more copies.[Please note the document is copyrighted.]
A review copy will be sent to a librarian, upon request.

What to Do Next?

Posted on January 4, 2013 by recoverydiva

Washington should prepare for disasters, not just react; Considering the frequency of multibillion-dollar natural disasters such as Superstorm Sandy, the government should devote more resources to preparing for them. LA Times, Jan. 4, 2013.

Congress took an important step to discourage development in risky areas last year when it rewrote the rules for the federal flood insurance program, ending counterproductive subsidies for new buildings in flood-prone areas and for existing buildings that had suffered repeated flooding. Now, it needs to promote the same kind of sensitivity to risk broadly, so that state and local governments take a firmer stance against development that ignores the risk of wildfires, hurricanes, floods and earthquakes.

One way to do so would be to insist that state and local governments match at least part of the federal disaster aid they receive, which would make them more leery of lax building codes and overly permissive zoning. Although federal law currently calls for Washington to pay only 75% of the tab for disaster assistance, Congress often reduces or even waives that requirement in the face of catastrophic losses. That’s a humane response, but it also creates a moral hazard.

Sandy’s victims need federal help today, but in the long run, lawmakers should look for other approaches to disaster preparedness besides writing big checks. A good example is the California Earthquake Authority’s proposal to use federal loan guarantees to reduce the cost of earthquake coverage, encouraging more people to obtain policies and, in the process, make their homes more quake-proof. Another idea is to provide tax incentives for local agencies to sell bonds to raise money for post-disaster repairs, as Congress has done for about a dozen states over the last decade. Rather than debating how much to spend in Sandy’s wake, policymakers at all levels should be looking for ways to reduce the cost of the catastrophes that are sure to follow.

The Sandy Problem – as noted in the New Yorker magazine

Posted on January 3, 2013 by recoverydiva

Bravo to the folks at the New Yorker magazine. In their account of the post-Sandy environment, there are useful insights into why resilience is such a difficult goal. In fact it appears that NY and NJ they will be lucky to achieve recovery with some mitigation, let along the longer term and larger concerns their political leaders have articulated, given the way Congress is operating presently.

I cite the article less for the political machinations described than for (a) the specific examples of day-to-day decisions that impair the ability of organizations to function during and after a disaster and (b) the description of the prevailing philosophy of many conservatives. Both are major impediments to the resilient end state so many of us would like to see.

See: The G.O.P.’s Sandy Problem; New Yorker Magazine, Jan. 3,2013. I urge you to read the whole article. A couple of summary paragraphs are below:

Even if Congressional Republicans weren’t working to keep progress on Capitol Hill at a continual halt, even if they didn’t make passing something like a budget all but impossible, getting the funding to protect the East Coast from storms like Sandy approved would be a difficult task at best.

For one thing, they’ve put themselves in a position where they are almost forced to oppose spending on disaster mitigation. Approving funding to prevent hurricane damage means acknowledging that there is a continuing danger from hurricanes and that it is getting worse, and that means acknowledging that the funding is not just part of some liberal global-warming conspiracy.

Feel free to comment. Remember, I did not write this, I am only reporting on it!

Another Problem With Recovery After Sandy – Congress

Posted on January 3, 2013 by recoverydiva

Not only the NY and NJ congressional delegations are furious with Congress, but so is the New York Times – see its editorial on Hurricane Sandy Aid, NY Times, January 2, 2013. They desperately need federal assistance and in a timely manner to assist with recovery processes.

There is a lot of finger-pointing in Washington about who is responsible for the mess made of the so-called fiscal-cliff negotiations, but there is no doubt about who failed thousands of residents and businesses devastated by Hurricane Sandy and still waiting for help: Speaker John Boehner.

Boehner yielded to the political pressure and now has the bill scheduled for attention in January.

Resilience and Political Leadership

Posted on January 1, 2013 by recoverydiva

One of the aspects of resilience that intrigues me is where the public sector leadership is likely to come from. In the immediate aftermath of H. Sandy, we have seen some encouraging statements and actions from Governors Cuomo and Christie and from Mayor Bloomberg. Obviously the superstorm provided a driving force, but other conditions must be in place for political action to occur. Here is an interesting take on Mayor Bloomberg’s possible motives:

Mayor Bloomberg focuses on Hurricane Sandy and gun control before singing his swan song; After donating millions in relief the NYC Mayor wants to see results before he gets nostaligic. (NY Daily News, Dec. 31, 2012.)

* * * Bloomberg spent nearly a week working to prepare the city for the superstorm. He directed the recovery, outlined an ambitious plan to protect the city from future hurricanes and took a lead role in lobbying Congress for help.

In his efforts on both Sandy and guns, Bloomberg’s vast wealth has given him more leverage in Congress.

He has donated millions of dollars to candidates and causes. This year alone, he set up a super political action committee and seeded it with more than $10 million to help elect moderates to Congress.

Making personal calls to lawmakers “is not something he does publicly, but it probably is one of the most important things that he can do because he is such a prominent figure as well as contributor in Washington,” said Kathryn Wylde of the Partnership for New York City, a business group.

Stu Loeser, Bloomberg’s former press secretary, said the fact that Bloomberg doesn’t have to worry about his reelection allows him to “swing for the fences.”

“He’s not looking for another job and he’s not going to run for any other office,” Loeser said. “So it allows him to . . . do things that you wouldn’t be able to do if you were being cautious or worried about offending someone or some group in the future.”

Too bad that those qualifications and conditions are so hard to replicate! But the takeaway point here point is that elected officials at high levels can, if they so decide, be effective “champions” of resilience actions. In my view they do not have to deal with the constraints that career public employees have – like restrictive authorizing legislation and program regulations.

Thinking Ahead – dual use buildings

Posted on December 30, 2012 by recoverydiva

Here is a sensible idea: build or rebuild a structure to serve as a shelter in future disasters. In this case gyms will be available for sheltering vulnerable residents. “FEMA building multiuse storm shelters along Texas coast,” Dec. 30, 2012.

Most of the time, the windowless building with the dome-shaped roof will be a typical high school gymnasium filled with cheering fans watching basketball and volleyball games.But come hurricane season, the structure that resembles a miniature version of the famed Astrodome will double as a hurricane shelter, part of an ambitious storm-defense system that is taking shape along hundreds of miles of the Texas Gulf Coast.

FEMA is paying for 75 percent of the dome structures, with local communities picking up the remaining cost. The funding is part of the agency’s initiative to help homeowners and communities build hardened shelters that provide protection from extreme weather.

Nationwide, more than $683 million has been awarded in 18 states, including Texas, Alabama, Michigan and South Carolina.

Texas Builds ‘Hurricane Domes’ for Double-Duty (AP)

Changing the Calculation for Utilities – pre and post disaster

Posted on December 29, 2012 by recoverydiva

In order to achieve more resilience after future disasters, all aspects of the cost-benefit calculations that are made about taking pre-event mitigative steps vs. just paying for repair and restoration post-disaster will have to re reassessed. This example about utilities illustrations the fundamental issue.

Hurricane Sandy Alters Utilities’ Calculus on Upgrades; NYT. December 29. Some excerpts follow:

After Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc with power systems in the Northeast, many consumers and public officials complained that the electric utilities had done far too little to protect their equipment from violent storms, which forecasters have warned could strike with increasing frequency.

But from a utility’s perspective, the cold hard math is this: it is typically far cheaper for the company, and its customers, to skip the prevention measures and just clean up the mess afterward.

Utilities and policy makers can see that ocean surge poses a previously unexpected threat to the power grid. And there is growing recognition that the true cost of disruptions, in terms of gasoline lines, lost workdays and business sales, and shivering homeowners, is far higher than the simple dollars and cents spent to protect the power system. A recent report from the National Academy of Sciences about the vast 2003 blackout in the Eastern United States determined that the economic cost of that disruption was about 50 times higher than the price of the actual electricity lost, and that didn’t take into account deaths or other human consequences.

“We need to think now of not just restoring the grid, but how to make it more survivable,” said Philip B. Jones, president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, a trade association of state officials. “I think most commissioners are coming around to that.”

Calculating the cost of disaster vs. the price of resilience (greenbiz.com)
Hurricane Sandy: Wake-Up Call for NJ Utilities (njspotlight.com)
Should utility electric lines go underground? A look at the costs (nj.com)

Disaster Relief After H. Sandy Slowed by Fiscal Cliff Politics

Posted on December 27, 2012 by recoverydiva

Fiscal cliff discussions get in way of post-Sandy relief measure; December 27, 2012; HSWire.

The post-Sandy rebuilding effort in the northeast has been stalled by the debate going on in Congress about a solution to the national debt. The post-Sandy rebuilding effort in the northeast has been stalled by the debate going on in Congress about a solution to the national debt..Hispanic Business reports that Lawmakers from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and several other states are still waiting for support for a measure which would allow speeding up of clean-up efforts construction, but with the focus on the fiscal cliff, the $60 billion White House Sandy relief request has taken a back seat.

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Haiti – still waiting for recovery

Posted on December 24, 2012 by recoverydiva

“Rebuilding in Haiti Lags After Billions in Post-Quake Aid;” NY Times, Dec. 23.

When you look at things, you say, ‘Hell, almost three years later, where is the reconstruction?’ ” said Michèle Pierre-Louis, a former prime minister of Haiti. “If you ask what went right and what went wrong, the answer is, most everything went wrong. There needs to be some accountability for all that money.”

An analysis of all that money — at least $7.5 billion disbursed so far — helps explain why such a seeming bounty is not more palpable here in the eviscerated capital city, where the world’s chief accomplishment is to have finally cleared away most of the rubble.

More than half of the money has gone to relief aid, which saves lives and alleviates misery but carries high costs and leaves no permanent footprint — tents shred; emergency food and water gets consumed; short-term jobs expire; transitional shelters, clinics and schools are not built to last.

Of the rest, only a portion went to earthquake reconstruction strictly defined. Instead, much of the so-called recovery aid was devoted to costly current programs, like highway building and H.I.V. prevention, and to new projects far outside the disaster zone, like an industrial park in the north and a teaching hospital in the central plateau.

Meanwhile, just a sliver of the total disbursement — $215 million — has been allocated to the most obvious and pressing need: safe, permanent housing. By comparison, an estimated minimum of $1.2 billion has been eaten up by short-term solutions — the tent camps, temporary shelters and cash grants that pay a year’s rent. “Housing is difficult and messy, and donors have shied away from it….”

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