Only two things are infinite. The universe and human stupidity- and I am not so sure about the former.
– Albert Einstein
The City of Fort Collins has recently approved a new housing development in the Poudre River floodplain – below the embankment and adjacent to the sewage plant in the center of the Google Earth image below.
People will enjoy the prospect of swimming in shite in their new home, and as an extra bonus the County Jail is just to the right of the picture.
Joke. Right? Right!?
No. “Homes from the $300,000s”
Kidder!
Gee, in Boulder this kind of location gets targeted for “permanently affordable” housing
BTW, how much of the “unaccounted for” in the flood-watch these days is inflated by the darling Homeless Community??
As long as the houses are built on stilts…
Then when they suffer from floods they blame ‘climate change’. If humans didn’t exists would there be increasing flood damage?
An authority and the officials involved in the process of providing building permits in a potentially dangerous area are both liable.
Over the past decades many law suits have been filed after people lost their lives and properties due to dangerous building locations. I remember a law suit in Turkey where the local government issued building permits in a flood plane and at the vicinity of a huge garbage dump.
The garbage dump crashed on the housing killing dozens of people and this case was eventually brought in front of the European Court where the local community and the officials responsible for issuing the building permits were announced guilty of manslaughter.
What influenced the outcome of this verdict were written reports from geologists and engineers who had warned the local government for the dangers posed by the garbage dump. It was concluded that the officials involved were blinded by the profits and personal gain that was made by turning worthless land into a building site.
All that has to be done to prevent the construction of housing in a flood plane is to inform the officials involved about the risks and tell them they will be liable for the possible consequences in case the area is flooded.
Of course this warning has to be supported by a solid report written by experts and this will be a done deal.
What also helps is to inform the local news paper and of course an article like this.
This is a world wide problem and it can be tackled by throwing the issues in the pubic domain.