Category: Disasters and Disaster Preparedness
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Norfolk to Create Special Service Districts for Flood-Prone Areas
The City of Norfolk has created a new mechanism for citizens to adapt to flooding and eroding coastlines. Neighborhoods now can vote to form “special service districts” that raise property taxes for projects dealing with flood mitigation, dredging, water quality improvement, and coastal protection, reports the Virginian-Pilot. Property owners can initiate projects by submitting a…
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Moral Hazard and Sea Level Rise
Why aren’t Virginia localities acting more aggressively to protect themselves from rising sea levels? You don’t have to believe in catastrophic global warming to acknowledge that sea levels are creeping steadily higher worldwide or that subsidence caused by shifting tectonic plates and shrinking aquifers is aggravating flooding in Virginia’s Tidewater. A big reason for the…
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Anthropogenic Global Warming Is Real. Now What?
Four hundred and fifteen. US News & World Report is reporting that the amount of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere reached more than 415 parts per million. The article quotes research from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography from May 11. Historical levels of CO2 in the atmosphere were measured through core ice samples prior to 1958…
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Dudes, Buy the Friggin’ Flood Insurance!
Sea levels may be rising and the risk of flooding increasing, but fewer Hampton Roads residents bought flood insurance in 2108 than five years previously, according to data presented by the Virginian-Pilot. Between 2013 and 2018 the number of households with flood insurance declined by about 5%. The only one of seven localities examined that…
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Floods, Roads and Risk Management
In a blog post yesterday (“Risk and the Fisc”), I cited an Old Dominion University study that guesstimated that Katrina-scale hurricane could cause $40 billion in damages and lost economic activity in Hampton Roads. The cost to the Commonwealth of coping with such a disaster, said Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne, “keeps me up at…
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Risk and the Fisc
As the Northam administration’s point man in negotiations with the New York bond-rating agencies, Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne spends much of his time worrying about the Commonwealth of Virginia’s credit-worthiness. The state nearly lost its sterling AAA bond rating last year. It was a close thing, he says. Even now, he adds, Virginia isn’t…
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Antifragile Urbanism, Skin in the Game, and Building What Works
One of the most important movements to emerge from the late 20th century was New Urbanism, a critique of autocentric suburbanism and architectural modernism that argued for human-scaled development patterns. The most important philosopher to emerge in the early 21st century is Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan,” “Antifragile,” and “Skin in the…
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Does Virginia Beach Have the Right Investment Priorities?
The City of Virginia Beach has shelled out $265 million in public funds to support 13 major public-private development projects from the Cavalier Hotel renovation to the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts. Those projects have attracted more than $1 billion in private investment, said Virginia Beach Mayor Bobby Dyer in his state-of-the-city address two…
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The Polar Vortex: Big Test for Virginia’s Energy Infrastructure
Another Polar Vortex is descending upon the United States, and it’s expected to bring record cold to the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic. The news media will be full of human-interest stories about new temperature records, homeless people freezing, and disruptions to daily life and business. But the real action will be how the energy industry —…
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Filling Virginia’s Flood Insurance Gap
by Lisa Miller A new Federal Emergency Management Agency report is shocking: 69% of Virginia homes in high risk flood zones do not have flood insurance. Another report reveals 17% of Virginia properties should be listed in high risk zones – but are not. Congress’s continued failure to reform an increasingly expensive National Flood Insurance…
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Shoreline Resiliency Funds for Hampton Roads?
In 2016 former Governor Terry McAuliffe signed a bill that set up a revolving loan fund to help homeowners and businesses elevate their properties to safeguard against sea level rise. Just one problem, says the Virginian-Pilot. The fund has no dedicated revenue source. Two years later, “the well is dry.” Now the Virginia Conservation Network…
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Hurricanes, Risk, and Fiscal Collapse
John Rubino, publisher of Dollarcollapse.com, and I think a lot alike when it comes to the inevitable fiscal collapse of the United States. The country (indeed the globe) is riding high today on a giant credit bubble right now, but sooner or later the bubble will pop and the economy will crash. If you buy…
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Hurricane Response Challenged By State Senators
On Monday, Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne talked about the cost of Virginia’s response to Hurricane Florence with little controversy, and that was before the storm spawned a series of tornadoes striking Mecklenburg County and Metro Richmond. Thursday, after Florence visited Virginia directly, he made the same presentation to another committee and suddenly ran into…
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Florence Could Provide First Test of Dominion’s Undergrounding Program
Hurricane Florence may not be the cataclysm for Virginia that everyone anticipated two or three days ago. Forecasts suggest that the hurricane will veer west, not north, when it hits the Carolina coast. But other hurricanes are spawning in the Atlantic Ocean, Virginia is still a potential target, and it is still worth exploring the…
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The Cyber Threat to Utilities Just Got Scarier
Russian hackers have broken into the control rooms of U.S. utilities where they could cause blackouts, federal officials have told the Wall Street Journal. The Russian hackers, who worked for a shadowy state-sponsored group previously identified as Dragonfly or Energetic Bear, broke into supposedly secure “air gapped” or isolated networks owned by utilities with relative…