Detroit blaming global warming instead of poor infrastructure maintenance.
Story submitted by Eric Worrall
The US City of Detroit is currently in the midst of a crisis – a massive rainstorm has overwhelmed the city’s sewer system, causing extensive flooding.
However, Craig Covey, spokesman for Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner Jim Nash, has blamed global warming for the floods.
According to Covey;
“The system worked exactly like it was supposed to, but we’re seeing these rain events that used to be unusual but just aren’t anymore,” Covey said. “This is going to become more normal and we need to understand that ‘100-year storm’ is an outdated term.”
Covey blamed climate change, and said federal and local governments need to make major investments in infrastructure because “this is exactly what Southeast Michigan’s weather is going to be like in the future.”
If the people of Detroit accept the explanation that global warming is to blame for the disaster, then nobody will be looking to blame the politicians who are responsible for maintaining the city’s waste water system.
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The actual rainfall data from the USHCN doesn’t support the claim:
Graph by Tony Heller from original NOAA data.
I wonder how well Detroit is keeping up with keeping the storm sewer system clear of debris? With so much of the city in urban decay, extra debris in the sewers is almost a given.
Even the EPA says regular cleaning is needed for storm water sewer systems to overflow:
Clogged drains and storm drain inlets can cause the drains to overflow…
One thing in the news recently about Detroit is the inability of many residents to pay their water bill. News media seems to have missed the connection in their own headlines.
Source: CBS Detroit
And as any homeowner reading this knows, the water bill also includes the sewage fee. When people aren’t paying the water bill, they also aren’t paying to keep the sewer system running. Here is the latest financial report for Detroit’s sewer system:
Source: http://www.dwsd.org/downloads_n/about_dwsd/financials/2013_sewage_fund.pdf
Note the yellow highlight, almost half of their budget is in “doubtful” aka unpaid accounts. Surely maintenance suffers when such a situation occurs.
No, it couldn’t be that. Why blame your own management of the sewer system when global warming is an easy out? – Anthony
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First they complain about not having free water and as soon as they get it, they don’t want it either …
Funny… I live about 40 miles (as the crow flies) from Detroit, and despite getting the same storms that they did, we didn’t have any particularly bad flooding.
Couldn’t be that my neighbors actually pay their property taxes, and our elected officials aren’t corrupt beyond belief, could it?
Bingo – same as here. One heavier than usual storm coupled with slightly above average snow pack in the mountains (caused by cooling, by the way) and we have record floods that have never been seen, ever. Unless you look it up and find worse ones in the 1920s and 30s. And there have been major reports every decade since then telling the city that they HAVE to dredge and berm the two major rivers that intersect in the middle of a major city… or else.
I feel like I live in a city of robots programmed to accept “climate change” as the “obvious” answer to everything that has happened here almost ever year, or at least every decade.
All cities and town counsels are benefiting from this charade, they can waste money on stupid crap that nobody needs or wants, and scream “climate change” when their failure to do their jobs becomes too obvious.
The 1967 riots happened because it was windy. Kilpatrick was put in prison because it was humid. Nearly 1.5 million residents have fled the city because of the dew point.
Windsor Ontario Canada is 200 yards away . . . . Seemed fine there. What we have is Micro, Teensy-Weensy Very Highly Localized “Global Warming”
(federal) Money talks!
well I am not on city water here but where I am in maine this year it pretty much has not stopped raining since april.
yeah slight exaggeration but due to rain I have not yet been able to fully mow the lawn in one sitting.
and my property not flooded, my roads are ok, including the one I maintain.
its been a cold summer here too, global warming my aching a$$
Absent yet from both analyses is the real cause of the problem.
The financial elites chose to abandon Detroit to decay so as to maximize exploitation of labor by offshoring jobs. No, that’s not the fault of local government, which actually offered obscene incentives to keep jobs. Google Poletown.
No administration can keep up the infrastructure of a city when the tax base is gone.
Furthermore… Craig Covey might want to blame climate change, but I’d sooner blame the miscreants who think that the highway is their personal trash can when the storm drains get clogged and back up water onto the roads.
“we need to understand that ‘100-year storm’ is an outdated term”
The term is outdated by overuse, the actuality remains the same.
If a tree falls in a forest and everybody saw it and says so, did it happen more than once?
The downturn in the economy hits everywhere and with nearly equal force from the middle incomers down, and in every state and territory. The replacement of decent wages with service jobs will not get us out of this quagmire. The replacement of town and city sized risky private companies with investment based stock holder international corporations who depress their overhead in order to keep stocks up is a comeback damper as well, not to mention regulations. And to tell you the truth, I don’t know how we are going to get out of it.
Climate change is the new generic code for extra money. It is used by Jerry Brown in California for drought relief money and a presidential visit and it will be used in Detroit for flooding money and general supplemental aid justification. Willful neglect of taxpayer funds is like a cancer and is unlikely to go away on its own.
The thread title: “Global Warming: The Incompetent Politician’s Excuse?”
would imply that there are competent politicians.
This assumes facts not in evidence.
/sarc
“The system worked exactly like it was supposed to”
Sounds just like “our algorithm is working as designed”.
The rainstorm and the ensuing flood is a godsend for warmists in the Detroit area. They had been screaming for the last decade that water levels in the Great Lakes were lower because of global warming. Those claims were discredited this year as water levels have risen to normal or above normal. Now they can talk about this rain event, which used to happen frequently in the 1980s, and I am sure will happen again. It will be interesting to see how the outcome differs in Baltimore or Long Island, which are suffering from even bigger deluge.
Oh boy. It’s sad how distorted stories get when they become national news. First off, no part of Detroit is in Oakland County.
Second, yes, this was, by all available climatological information, a 100-year storm for the Detroit metro area, especially given that the entire event was really only 6 hours in length, with the flooding rain really occurring over maybe 2 hours. The extreme totals were highly localized over a specific area pretty much smack dab over Detroit and the closest cities. Some cities bordering Detroit (and where the worst highway flooding was) got over 6″ of rain in a few hours. 6″ is nearly 20% of annual average precip for this area.
The only really comparable recorded event for Detroit occurred on July 31, 1925. Still sounds like a 100-year event to me.
Don’t know about “100-year storm”, but I do believe 100-year FLOOD is an outdated term. Although localized these problems are anthropogenic in nature and caused by land use changes resulting in more run off, new bridge footings which restrict river flow, levies, and lack of adequate dredging result in backup of rivers. In another century I lived in the New Orleans area for 10 years and experienced several 100-year floods.
This is exactly the same as the flooding in South-West England – blame it on global warming when it was actually a deliberate policy of not clearing the flood drains.
Just like the floods earlier this year on the Somerset levels – although rural not urban. Blame climate change and not the woeful level of river and drain maintenance over the last 25 years.
Terry
If climate change was a human being, it could, in some nations, successfully sue for defamation of character.
There was flooding in Windsor too, although it does not seem to be as bad. http://windsorite.ca/2014/08/reader-photos-windsor-floods-after-heavy-rains/
If there is data on the Detroit weather station’s rainfall record, it should be posted–ideally as a chart.
Also, if there is historic data on money spent on sewer maintenance, that should be posted.
Hopefully this flooding partially flushed out some of the blockage.
I have no idea if this will link properly either, but here goes: http://water.weather.gov/precip/index.php?yday=1407801600&yday_analysis=0&layer%5B%5D=0&layer%5B%5D=1&layer%5B%5D=4&timetype=RECENT&loctype=STATE&units=engl&timeframe=last7days&product=observed&loc=stateMI
Note the location of the extreme totals are directly over Detroit.
This happened courtesy a deepening surface low riding up southwest of Detroit which caused an area of intense rain to form for several hours just east of the dry slot. It was a system with fall-like dynamics but with the more typical summer airmass and moisture content. The 1925 event happened in a similar setup. Strong baroclinic lows are not typical in early or mid-August and the jet stream is usually fairly north of here during summer.
@ur momisugly rogerknights –
It’s one thing to say: “Also, if there is historic data on money spent on sewer maintenance, that should be posted.”
It’s entirely another to fish out what percentage of cash that was given for sewer maintenance actually went for sewer maintenance, and not for kickbacks and bribes.
From Katrina to Sandy and now this year even thunderstorms we see the results of decades of incompetent governance hiding behind climate as an excuse for the failures of the government workers and leaders to do their basic jobs. Detroit’s use of this excuse, when their incompetent leadership has literally destroyed the city, may wake people up. It is time to stop allowing the climate fear scam be used to hide corrupt incompetence.