While Americans sit down to watch the Superbowl and its corresponding festivities this Sunday, there will be many things to ponder. Can New England prevail and win its fifth title or will Atlanta’s formidable offense win the day? And of course, there will be countless individual subplots, the ads, and Lady Gaga’s halftime performance. Viewers of the game might even stop to consider whether guacamole, now a staple for this occasion, will be priced the same this time next year. But one thing that will likely not be on the minds of most viewers is floods and droughts and their consequent effects on water infrastructure; yet, this year the game is a showcase for both.
Houston has been called the flood capital of the United States and recently experienced a significant flood[i] after a rainstorm on January 18.th There have been concerns that a similar incident could interfere with the game this week. The storm dumped half a foot of water on Houston in a number a hours and, ironically, postponed a symposium by the American Institute of Architects on Stormwater and Flooding. The event featured two panel discussions on how to deal with flooding but instead of attending the meeting city officials and first responders spent the time dealing with a real flood, instead of discussing a hypothetical one.
For much of history people built communities near reliable sources of drinking water and erected infrastructure to capture, treat and transfer that water. It made sense. So intent were people on making certain they had adequate access to water that the destructive nature of water in general was often taken for granted. Building in deserts, flood plains, filled in wetlands and low lying coastal zones has left many communities subject to rising seas or extreme weather events such as flash floods. As the world urbanizes, many soils that used to absorb excess water have been replaced by paved roads and concrete buildings. Houston, adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico and built on a number of bayous is one such place. In Harris County, home to Houston, almost 30 percent of freshwater wetlands were lost between 1992 and 2010 according to Texas A&M scientist John Jacob[ii].
Neighboring Louisiana is not faring any better in this respect. Since 1932 the state has lost 1800 square miles of land as a system of levees, designed to protect urban areas from flooding, has caused significant erosion and diminished wetlands that had served as barriers to the encroaching sea[iii]. And flooding in many states in the Midwest occurred in June 2008 after heavy rain caused a number of rivers to overflow their banks. On September 15, 2009, a low pressure system began to dump water on central Georgia. It rained for eight days and in one 3 day period 20 inches of rain fell in the region. There was a great deal of damage caused by the ensuing floods, eleven deaths, sixteen thousand left homeless and a sewage plant overflowed releasing untreated sewage into surrounding neighborhoods.
The result of all of this is investment in costly infrastructure; effectively, or not, trying to reverse engineer nature. Since 2012 Houston has spent more than $1 billion to improve drainage[iv]and any plans to bolster Louisiana’s coastline or manage storm runoff in Atlanta will undoubtedly call for much more.
If floods do not come to mind while gazing at the game and all of its pageantry this Sunday perhaps another topic: drought. The surface of NRG Stadium is AstroTurf which has a curious history in Houston. The original AstroTurf brand was invented in 1965, named ChemGrass but later renamed after its first prominent use at the Houston Astrodome Stadium in 1966 – interestingly the Astrodome suffered the first recorded indoor rainout in 1976 when flooding in its environs prevented fans from attending a Houston Astros game.
Aside from its durable qualities so prized for athletic fields, artificial turf has become a major tool in drought mitigation. In 2003 the city of Las Vegas implemented a water savings program for lawns and golf courses started what is believed to be the first lawn removal rebate program in the country. Since that time many municipalities in California and throughout the Southwest started offering rebates to customers for installing artificial turf in place of grass. In parts of the Southwest a square foot of lawn can use up to 55 gallons of water a year to maintain and lawn mitigation is a form of water conservation.
Of course, in the Southwest many of the water problems stem from overbuilding, suboptimal use of water, and geography that was largely desert until recently and is, arguably, becoming desert yet again. Saving water via lawn replacement is a modest response compared to billions spent on water infrastructure such as Carlsbad’s new desalination plant, the California Aquaduct, or Lake Mead’s third water intake tunnel dubbed the “third straw.” But given the increased challenges associated with managing our water resources conservation does help.
So get ready to enjoy the game, and don’t give water another thought – unless there are heavy rains in Houston on Sunday.
[i] The Weather Channel, January 18, 2017; Houston Swamped by Flooding: Cars Stranded, Dozens of Water Rescues Reported.
[ii] The Texas Tribune, December 7, 2016; Boom town, flood town: How Houston’s development increases flood risk.
[iii] Bloomberg, January 26, 2017; Trump Wants to Downplay Global Warming. Louisiana Won’t Let Him.
[iv] US News, April 19, 2016; Houston Flood Control Efforts are Failing.
