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Bechtel says the Park Plan, which has far less momentum behind it and no funding, is little more than a distraction. The Ike Dike plan is already clearing what could be years of regulatory hurdles and has a much better chance of becoming a reality. But its immense price tag is a looming concern. Bechtel was recently appointed to the board overseeing the Gulf Coast Protection District, a new state body that has the authority to levy taxes and issue bonds to pay for the Ike Dike.
Texas will likely be on the hook for 35 percent of the costs, but the rest will have to come from a federal government that hasn t shown much enthusiasm for the project. The state s congressional delegation supports it but not with the passion that channels billions of dollars from a federal budget still reeling from the high cost of fighting the coronavirus pandemic. We have lots of people who support the project, Mitchell said. Everybody will tell you they think it s a good idea. But do we have a champion for it? No.
If the project breaks ground in 2024, as scheduled, construction will likely take 19 years. We re looking at this as a generational project, Burks-Copes said.
Mitchell says he knows what will speed up the process: a deadly storm. New Orleans got its long-awaited and hugely expensive storm protection system after Katrina. If Houston gets a hurricane that kills 2,000 people like Katrina did, we will get a check the next week, and we will build our protection system in three and a half years, he said. In the second scenario the one without a hurricane it takes 20 years and every year we re asking the feds for money.
Burks-Copes hopes death and destruction aren t the only motivators of political leaders. Despite the project s high costs, she stresses that the Ike Dike is estimated to reduce structural damage by about $2.3 billion annually. For every dollar spent, we save two in what we re protecting, she said. When I say it pays for itself after one storm, I m not kidding.
But that one storm is yesterday s storm, Blackburn said. Tomorrow s storm isn t going to act like Ike or the relatively weak storms the Ike Dike is built to withstand. They re building for a Category 1 or 2 storm, but it s the 3s, 4s and 5s that we should be building for as our planet warms, he said. We have not caught up with the reality of climate change. Until we wrap our heads around what s to come, we re going to have to deal with more severe storms that cause a lot more industrial spills and kill a lot more people.
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