Houston, We Have A Problem, Con't

America's fourth-largest city is underwater and will remain so for months, and as Chuck Pierce points out, the fate of Baghdad on the Bayou was sealed decades ago by Governors and state and local lawmakers in both parties.

It is the Christian thing to do in the middle of tragedies like the one currently unfolding along the Texas-Louisiana Gulf coast not to politicize human suffering and, certainly, the stories of people rescuing their fellow citizens from this calamity deserve to be told and they deserve to be spread as widely as possible. But there is nothing I can find in the Gospels that would forbid us from politicizing politics. So let us summon the ghost of Walter Winchell and review some of the events of the past few days.

Item: In Crosby, Texas, there is a place called the Arkema chemical plant where they work with something called organic peroxides. This plant is located amid a residential and business district where, remarkably, human beings live and work. If the cooling systems in the plant fail, as they apparently have, these organic peroxides can explode. A 1.5 mile radius around the plant has been evacuated. 

That plant exploded early this morning, by the way.

Item: Houston is home to a great number of SuperFund sites—at least a dozen in Harris County alone—because, what the hell, they have to be somewhere, right, and some place has to be the Petrochemical Capital Of America? From the WaPo:

With its massive petroleum and chemical industry, Houston, part of the "Chemical Coast," presents a huge challenge in a major flooding event, said Mathy Stanislaus, who oversaw the federal Superfund program throughout the Obama administration. Typically the EPA tries to identify Superfund sites in a major storm's path to "shore up the active operations" and "minimize seepage from sites," Stanislaus said. "This is not the time to dictate; it's the time to work together well with state and local officials to think about needs that need to be met." 

Item: In Baytown, there is a Chevron Phillips petrochemical facility in a place called Cedar Bayou. As you might have guessed from that name, the facility is, at present, fish food. ExxonMobil has similar problems, which it is involuntarily sharing with its fellow Texans and will be for some time. 

Item: And this one may be my favorite, which is to say, the one that pushes me under the bed the furthest. On Galveston Island, there is the Galveston National Laboratory, which is part of the University of Texas Medical Branch. This laboratory contains some of the most deadly biological agents found in the known world, many of them of the airborne variety. It contain several Bio-Safety Level 4 labs, which are basically the places where plagues are studied. And here's the thing, as HuffPost explains—nobody knows what's going on there at the moment:

There has been almost no news from Galveston as journalists have reported being blocked from reaching the island because of severe flooding. There has been no reporting at all on the condition of the lab. A call to the laboratory on Tuesday immediately went to voicemail. 

Here's a professor with some happy news.

But the generators run on fuel that would have to be replenished. It is not known if the lab is accessible to emergency crews to refuel the generators, which are stored on the roof, according to the 2008 Times piece. "As I see it the existential problem is this: What happens if and when the fuel for the back-up generators runs out?" asked University of Illinois professor Francis Boyle, an expert in biological weapons. "The negative air pressure that keeps (the) bugs in there ends. And (the) bugs can then escape."

To recap, 6.5 million plus people from Corpus Christi to Beaumont and Port Arthur into Louisiana (so really more like 10 million) are screwed.  The biological, ecological, and chemical damage to Houston from Harvey will take years to fix, if not decades.  I don't think people are actually ready for the price tag on this, because I'm thinking it's going to be somewhere around "Apple's current cash reserves on hand" give or take a few tens of billions or so, and I might be lowballing it.

And again, there's a lot of blame to go around for Democrats locally and Republicans state-wide, and that includes everyone from Dubya to Rick Perry to Ann Richards and everyone in between. Houston said "Hold my beer" and turned into a massive sprawl in an antediluvian flood plain, and Harvey came along and filled that flood plain the hell up. The oil money was good, and everyone took it.

Here's the best part:  Trump is only going to make this worse, so much worse.  It really won't be long before the talking heads on FOX are telling the locals that Houston maybe shouldn't be rebuilt because we can't afford it.  You thought getting rid of those people in New Orleans was a massive undertaking, well, you ain't seen nothing yet.  Wait until the Republicans rewrite Houston's history.

As goes Baghdad on the Bayou, goes the rest of America.  Just watch.