Essay by Eric Worrall
Professor Franco Montalto of Drexel University wants to slow runoff and allow parts of the city to flood, to mitigate damage from extreme rainfall and reduce runoff pollution.
As climate change amplifies urban flooding, here’s how communities can become ‘sponge cities’
Published: May 8, 2024 4.03am AEST
Franco Montalto
Professor of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering and Director, Sustainable Water Resource Engineering Laboratory, Drexel University“When it rains, it pours” once was a metaphor for bad things happening in clusters. Now it’s becoming a statement of fact about rainfall in a changing climate.
Across the continental U.S., intense single-day precipitation events are growing more frequent, fueled by warming air that can hold increasing levels of moisture. Most recently, areas north of Houston received 12 to 20 inches (30 to 50 centimeters) of rain in several days in early May 2024, leading to swamped roads and evacuations.
Earlier in the year, San Diego received 2.72 inches (7 centimeters) of rain on Jan. 22 that damaged nearly 600 homes and displaced about 1,200 people. Two weeks later, an atmospheric river dumped 5 to 10 inches (12 to 25 centimeters) of rain on Los Angeles, causing widespread mudslides and leaving more than a million people without power.
Events like these have sparked interest in so-called sponge cities – a comprehensive approach to urban flood mitigation that uses innovative landscape and drainage designs to reduce and slow down runoff, while allowing certain parts of the city to flood safely during extreme weather. Sponge city techniques differ from other stormwater management approaches because they are scaled to much larger storms and need to be applied across nearly all urban surfaces.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/as-climate-change-amplifies-urban-flooding-heres-how-communities-can-become-sponge-cities-217075
Model based claims that flooding is getting worse on a global scale are not backed by observational evidence.
As for the “sponge city” plan, this all sounds fancy and modern, but what about putting peoples homes first, and just building bigger drains?
In my subtropical town on the East Coast of Australia, we have street drains you can comfortably walk along. The kinds of rain which causes major flooding in San Diego, we call that “Wet Season”.
It takes weeks of heavy tropical deluge to even begin to flood those suspiciously flat areas in my town which nobody should ever have built on. Where I live on a slightly elevated location, it would take a direct hit from a tropical cyclone to do real damage. My home is very rarely threatened by floods, even when my street turns into a river – all the runoff water gushes harmlessly into our oversize drainage system, and within 20 minutes of the rain stopping all the surface water is gone.
I’m not denying runoff management plays a role, slowing water entry into river systems can reduce peak flood. But sometimes you just have to move the water very quickly to somewhere else.
In the article above Professor Franco Montalo emphasised the benefits of greener water management systems, such as reduced pollution wherever you are dumping the runoff. But if homes are threatened, who cares about a little pollution? Keeping people’s homes safe from floods should be the highest priority.
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But building bigger drains would be politically incorrect?
I think his problem is big drains cause more pollution, which falls afoul of anti-pollution laws, but if you have time read the whole article and see if you can figure it out.
why do big drains cause more pollution?
I would think they could build dams to hold back excessive rain. Behind the dams, it’ll be dry most of the time.
Oh! Heathen! Think about the delta smout!
I Dunno, Biden is certainly a “Bigger Drain” …
On Tax Coffers
The Strategic Oil Reserves
In Country Manufacturing
My Wallet
“Earlier in the year, San Diego received 2.72 inches (7 centimeters) of rain on Jan. 22 that damaged nearly 600 homes”. Wow, a whole 2.72 inches in a day. /s If their drainage system can’t handle that amount of rain they have a city engineering problem. With San Diego’s ongoing water problems you’d think they would welcome more rain and save it for later.
The obvious way they use BOTH flood and drought to push the narrative, and they think we don’t see thru the lies.
The rain clouds sat over sections of the City dumping more rain than what was measured at the airport or whatever location. This is why the drainage system was overwhelmed. The damage and issues were over played by the media. Suprise, surprise.
Issue rain barrels.
Pollution from the rain runoff from San Diego which is rare vs the untreated sewage
being dumped into the Pacific from Tijuana MX 24/7. This enviro professor
he needs to convince the Mexicans to clean up their act first then get back to us with his
“sponge city” deal.
The Tijuana river is the source of the Mexican brown trout off the coast of Imperial Beach.
But seriously, the problem for San Diego was they never cleared out the drainage basins. Some of those had 30′ trees growing in them.
That thought occurred to me also, Mr. Ed. Why spend all that money when just across the border is an unchecked source of pollution?
And has the professor from Drexel in Pennsylvania spent much time in San Diego? Or did he log thousands of miles on Google Earth?
Low parts of my city flooded severely when a tropical storm dropped over 10 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. A major part was due to trash, that impinged on the trash rack leading into a 7 foot diameter storm drain that had not been cleaned out in years. They cleaned it all out and rebuilt that system. I am not sure about its current status.
Three observations.
First, the professor’s link to ‘more intense single day rainfall’ goes to assertions in the intro to the 2023 National Climate Assessment (NCA) unsupported by any data. In essay ‘Credibility Conundrums’ in ebook Blowing Smoke I dissected every ‘worsening climate’ example in chapter 1 of the 2014 NCA. They were all either contrived or simply false. Not an honest example in the whole chapter. Just a US government multiagency con job. Doubt 2023 NCA is any different under Biden.
Second, Houston was originally supposed to be a ‘sponge city’, with construction prohibited on known seasonal flood plains and with a planned canal drainage system. That all got ignored for decades, and now Houston pays a high price every few years—like last week.
Third, Montalto is a professor of engineering and an engineering lab director at Drexel. But he is not a true engineer—they only engineer the possible, not the impossible. San Diego and LA are fully built up and could never be converted to ‘sponge cities’ like Houston was supposed to be but isn’t. Easier to teach the impossible dream at Drexel.
“construction prohibited on known seasonal flood plains and with a planned canal drainage system”
The ancient Romans could do that. Just saw something about that in a YouTube video.
I don’t know about this. It appears to be a big deal in China. It seems to be using open space to hold excess water and making hard surfaces less prone to letting water run off. It would be terribly disruptive to established communities, someone is going to have to give up their property. I doubt it could be built to scales to prevent damage from major down pours. I can’t see the value in communities with high water tables. There may be a place for it but probably not many.
China is a place which doesn’t let property ownership get in the way of the latest bureaucratic lunacy, especially if the properties are owned by nobodies
The kind of government that the Greens want for the rest of the world.
Could always construct above ground cisterns that hold millions of gallons and pumps to fill them during storms. Then after the storm subsides reverse the pumps and gradually get rid of the water
You could even use the emptying cycle to generate a little electricity in the process
Simpler to distribute a few hundred thousand rain barrels. These rain barrels could even be used to water yards and gardens between rain storms.
Here’s a short YouTube video that illustrates the scale and degree of the runoff
pollution from Tijuana in San Diego=====>
Does this sewage and trash have anything to do with the large number of transients, existing completely outside whatever public health facilities exist in Tijuana, who are hanging around the border waiting for their turn to sneak across?
Probably a connection of some sort but it was a mess back in the early 70’s when I first
went down there. I spent some time in Cozumel yrs ago
on the Caribbean side . The diving was great and the Mayan ruins and culture
was completely the opposite of the border culture, but that’s all changed now too.. If I was into that scene now I’d look at Costa Rica.
I think you just cured me of ever wanting to swim at a California beach.
That volume of raw sewage equates to a mass of 65 million tons!
Now I know there is a bit of a problem in parts of Mexico, but seriously, 65 million tons of effluent flooding across the California border? That’s incredible. Just a single storm washes out 65 million tons of shi1t. There must be a lot of it just hanging around on the California border, no wonder so many want to get out of there..
As bad as TJ is I’ve seen worse. After being at sea for a month or so your
sense of smell becomes heightened. I recall smelling different places in SE
Asia 3-4 days out. Kaohsiung Taiwan is a beautiful exotic city for example,
but don’t ever fall into the harbor…
Cost? Source of funds?
How the GDF do you flood parts of a single contiguous and continuous downward slope?
Someone needs to leave a box of radioactive and viral body loaded poison labeled “radioactive viral body poison mixture” in front of that idiot so he can “brilliantly” eat it on reflex.
The rate at which water runs off of a piece of land depends on the degree of slope. As long as the rain and runoff from higher elevations exceeds the rate of natural runoff, then there will be flooding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_Tunnel
Kuala Lumpur solved their flooding problem with real engineering rather than try to change the weather
Easy enough for him to suggest when he is on the opposite side of the country.
Sponge?? .. raining again here in the Hunter Valley.
The ground is like very full sponge !! 🙁
Grass continues to grow, and will need a few days of good sunshine before I can mow it.
At least Dr Montalto is suggesting adaptation rather than fixing the climate. The sponge city works well here in the low country near Charleston SC. Above 20 feet elevation is the high ground. Every neighborhood has one or two drainage ponds (the gators and turtles love them). Been through fierce rain and hurricanes without flooding. Ponds fill then slowly drain. Probably hard to retrofit a city.
2 3/4 inches? We call that a bit of a scud.
Only if his house will be one of the first inundated! But somehow, I don’t think his place is at risk. That is for the peasants. Why is it that the climate activists use models that are never supported by what really happens and why are they so willing to throw everyone but themselves under a bus.
Perhaps the first step is: go ask a geologist why water doesn’t flow into San Diego soils.
the second step is to recognize: San Diego homes flood because real estate there is so outrageously expensive people split their oversized lots and build a spec-home in “the bad part” of the Arroyos (Dry Wash) … where smart urban planners wouldn’t allow construction, and competent insurers wouldn’t write policies.
this is not a new story:
See https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1968/0554/report.pdf
USGS Circular 554
Hydrology for Urban Land Planning – …by Aldo B. Leopold, 1968
Eh! Ciao Franco! Dobbiamo chiamarti Sponge Bob cervello spugnoso.
In my part of the UK, we call that summer
But this won’t be the last we hear of Tulare Lake. With the climate crisis intensifying California’s wet and dry extremes, the lake will probably continue to return in wet years, Jay Lund, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at University of California, Davis, wrote last year.
And allowing the lake to remain could offer benefits by recharging diminishing groundwater and boosting wildlife in the area, Underhill said. The aquifer in the lake basin, land that is predominantly owned by the agricultural giant JG Boswell Company, has been significantly depleted, which has caused the land in the area to sink.
“Any attempts to make this anything other than a lake bed are going to face the powers of floodwater eventually,” Underhill said. “It behooves us to let it remain as is because that’s clearly where the water wants to go, and it’s going to continue to go there.”
The lake is the natural state of this area, she added.
“It was such a rich and kind of teeming ecosystem. It says something about how the birds, the fish, they’re always waiting for the lake to return. And when it returns they are ready to go and be a part of it.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/24/california-tulare-lake-shrinking
You make the assumption that people should be allowed to own homes.
In the brave new world, you’ll live in the econobox you’re issued and you’ll like it. When the floods wash it away, it’s no big deal…wasn’t yours to begin with. They’ll assign you to another econobox in three or four years and you’ll live happily ever after.
Where do you live during the 3 or 4 years that you’re waiting for your new econobox assignment? You can just pitch a tent on the sidewalk like everyone else who’s “unhoused”.
World wide, average rainfall over land is about 46 inches per year. This rainfall has been increasing at a rate of about 0.002 inches per year since 1901. That less than the thickness of a sheet of paper each year and is derived by drawing a least squares line through available data. Somehow, it seems incredulous to me that rainfall, which has increased an immeasurably small amount for more than a century, could have any measurable effect on world wide floods and droughts? There may be local changes in such events in recent years, but the cause is not and cannot be global climate change.
Local changes? You mean like…. wait for it…. weather?
…and without error bars on that “increase” it is meaningless.
1972 – Corning New York. Agnes caused severe flooding.
An after event brochure was published. On the front cover were some of my cousins clinging to the top of a stop sign. On the back cover showed the row boat sent to rescue them.
Floods happen. Rain happens. Storms happen. Weather happens.
One can only prepare as best as possible then deal with whatever Ma Nature throws our way.
Controlling run off as proposed will only have major property damage unless every house is enclosed with a sea wall.
The proposal is idiotic.
El Nino refilled California reservoirs. Lake Power and Lake Mead are recovering. They won’t completely recover as California’s population increased by some 20 million without adding any water supply, except to keep pulling more water from the Colorado.
Anyhow, we got some ARC storms, like the one that flooded Sacramento in the 1800’s. Now the freaks are out screaming about the rain, like they were screaming about COVID.
In two years, we’ll be back to drought conditions again, and they’ll be screaming about that. If it’s bad, it’s climate change.
Powell