Disaster Relief and Recovery

Our coastal district is no stranger to the vagaries of the weather, especially with fierce storms blowing ashore from the Gulf of Mexico.  Indeed, long before the National Weather Service began naming hurricanes, the Great Galveston Storm of 1900 remains the deadliest storm in U.S. history, with an estimated 6,000 to 12,000 lives lost.

In my lifetime alone, Hurricanes Audrey (1957), Debra (1959), Carla (1961), Editha and Fern (both in 1971), Anita (1977), Jeanne (1980), Alicia (1983), Juan (1985), Chantal and Jerry (both in 1989), Rosa (1994), Claudette (2003), Ivan (2004), Rita (2005), Humberto (2007), Gustav and Ike (both in 2008), Isaac (2012), and Harvey (2017)—not to mention countless named Tropical Storms, tropical depressions, and other unnamed storms—have directly impacted the area now comprising the 14^th Congressional District of Texas.

Hurricane Harvey

We are still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Harvey, where Texas 14 was “ground zero” for Harvey’s destruction.  I am grateful we are finally sending relief to areas that have waited long enough, and I have not stopped fighting for the needed federal relief funding to get this nationally significant region back on its feet.

On Thursday, June 6, 2019, President Donald Trump signed H.R. 2157, the Additional Supplemental Appropriations for Disaster Relief Act of 2019, into law.  Included in the bill was legislation mandating that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) release several billion dollars owed to Texans still recovering from Hurricane Harvey. 

Nearly two years ago, Hurricane Harvey left a path of destruction across Southeast Texas, and many Texans are still waiting for relief.  The money released by this bill was appropriated over a year ago.  In that time, unelected bureaucrats held up these funds with lollygagging and excuses.  My colleagues and I would not stand for this.  Thanks to legislation introduced by Senators John Cornyn and Joe Manchin, which Representative Lizzie Fletcher and I introduced in the House, families needing relief will finally receive it.  Included in this law is our language directing OMB to release the $4.383 billion within the next 90 days.  Though far too late and as yet another hurricane season starts, this funding will bring much needed relief to Texans affected by Hurricane Harvey.

Tropical Storm Imelda 

Most recently, it was not a hurricane that walloped Texas-14, but a “lesser” event, Tropical Storm Imelda.  Don’t let the designation fool you, though:  Imelda, the fifth-wettest tropical cyclone on record in the continental U.S., wreaked an estimated $5 billion in damages.

On March 11, 2020, joined by Sens. Cornyn and Cruz and the entire Texas Congressional Delegation, I spearheaded a joint letter to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), expressing concern for Texas communities that suffered public infrastructure damage during Tropical Storm Imelda.  The letter highlights the troublesome discrepancy between FEMA and local jurisdictions’ preliminary damage assessments.  As stated in the letter, “FEMA certified these costs at approximately $18 million, far short of the $125 million in costs identified by local jurisdictions.”

In parts of my district, the impact was even greater than the hard hit we took from Hurricane Harvey.  As a result of the lag in funding, coupled with the extreme financial hit from Harvey, many of our small communities are literally struggling to recover and desperately need the assistance that a Public Assistance declaration would provide.  Unfortunately, FEMA denied the state’s request to add the Public Assistance (PA) program to the Major Disaster Declaration for Tropical Storm Imelda, for the following counties:  Chambers, Hardin, Harris, Jasper, Jefferson, Liberty, Matagorda, Montgomery, Newton and Orange.  Our Texas delegation letter dovetailed with the state’s appeal of this denial.

FEMA is establishing a very dangerous precedent, if allowed to rely on unverified data while refusing to provide that information in their denial of PA declarations.  There is no question that, after Harvey and the delay in reimbursements, these communities have legitimate need.  There is also no question—as evidenced by the state’s findings of $125 million in damages—that the damages were significant enough to qualify for relief.  If a federal agency can short-change us without providing their justification, we will experience significant problems when—not if—we are hit again.

Flood Insurance 

Backed by taxpayers, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was created in 1968 to provide government insurance protection against flood risks for both homeowners and commercial businesses.  Fifty years later, the federal program is a monopoly.  With over $30 billion borrowed from taxpayers, it operates a $1.4 billion annual deficit and lacks the innovation expected of a company with $1.2 trillion of insurance coverage.

Once again, without further action on pending reform legislation, NFIP’s authority to provide flood insurance will expire on September 30, 2020.  Since the end of FY2017, 15 short-term NFIP reauthorizations have been enacted.  The NFIP was extended 17 times between 2008 and 2012, and it lapsed 4 times: March 1 to March 2, 2010; March 29 to April 15, 2010; June 1 to July 2, 2010; and October 1 to October 5, 2011.  In most cases when the NFIP lapsed, Congress reauthorized the NFIP retroactively.

That said, we should not be lurching from one short-term fix to the next.

The House has already taken thoughtful and timely action in the past, to implement needed reforms and forestall any lapse in the program.  On November 14, 2017, the House passed H.R. 2874, the 21^st Century Flood Reform Act, with my support.  It would reauthorize the NFIP for five years, introduce private market competition, and provide programmatic reform to help policyholders.

This legislation would have significantly reformed NFIP to ensure its long-term sustainability.  Specifically, it included the following key provisions:

• Affordable NFIP coverage for current policyholders.  It decreased, from 18 to 15 percent, the cap on any individual’s annual rate increases; limited the chargeable risk premium of any residential property to no more than $10,000 per year; left in place the current practice of grandfathering; reduced annual surcharges from $250 to $125 for certain non-owner occupied low-risk residential properties; allowed for the continued coverage of new construction.
• Consideration of coastal and inland locations in premium rates.  It required consideration of unique characteristics of inland properties that are often over-charged.
• Monthly installment payment of premiums.  It expedited the implementation of policyholder monthly installment payment of premiums.
• Flood Damage Savings Accounts.  It required the study and development of Flood Damage Savings Accounts for individual policyholders to facilitate either the reduction or elimination of NFIP premiums.
• A private market for flood insurance.  It provided greater private market access, competition, and consumer choice.  These changes would help real people save real money.  According to Milliman, the actuarial firm, “[M]arket feasibility studies in three states—Florida, Texas, and Louisiana—which combined account for 56% of NFIP insurance policies in-force nationwide … found that a majority of single-family homes could see cheaper premiums with private insurance than with the NFIP.  Based on our estimates, this would hold for 77% of all single-family homes in Florida, 69% in Louisiana, and 92% in Texas."
• Community flood maps.  The bill allowed localities, who elect to use their own resources, to develop their own map alternatives to NFIP flood maps using better and cost-effective technology at an accelerated pace, subject to FEMA standards and approval.
• Simplification of FEMA’s approach to multiple-loss properties.  It provided a simpler way to identify and address at-risk properties through a new “multiple-loss property” designation, based on three distinctions: “repetitive-loss,” “severe repetitive-loss,” and “extreme repetitive-loss.”  It enabled FEMA to efficiently designate and track multiple-loss properties and measure their risks.  It prioritized mitigation assistance for multiple-loss properties, representing a disproportionate number of NFIP claims payments.
• Financial soundness.  It required, for the first time, FEMA accountability of the solvency and actuarial soundness of the NFIP program by requiring an annual independent actuarial study of the NFIP fund to determine whether the government program is collecting revenue sufficient to cover its long-term expected losses.  It prioritized maintaining the Reserve Fund, to avoid future NFIP borrowing from the U.S. Treasury.  To prevent further taxpayer bailouts and achieve actuarial soundness, it limited any new scheduled rate increases for properties charged discounted rates to .5 percent annually, capped at 6.5 percent.  It reduced payments to “Write Your Own” companies by 3 percent to preserve the NFIP and prevent future bailouts.
• A risk transfer requirement.  It required the use of risk transfer tools (such as reinsurance, catastrophe bonds, collateralized reinsurance, resilience bonds, and other insurance-linked securities) to reduce direct taxpayer exposure to insurance losses.
• Premium Surcharge Reforms.  It cut in half the Grimm-Waters surcharge on the lowest-risk non-primary residences, while simultaneously limiting increases to the surcharge on other properties by an average of less than $2 per month.
• Formalizing a claim-dispute appeals process.  It required due process protections for consumers, and it allowed for more efficient claims processing.
• Improved disclosure requirement for standard policies.  It provided each policyholder a disclosure sheet that provides general information about the policyholder’s standard NFIP policy.

Given the NFIP’s vital importance to our district, I will continue to encourage my colleagues to take meaningful action on this time-sensitive issue when we reconvene.  The Senate should take real action and pass reform measures soon.  NFIP in its current form is unstainable, and we cannot afford to keep kicking this can down the road.

Coastal Barrier Protection System 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is working closely with the Texas General Land Office (GLO) to study the feasibility of constructing coastal storm risk management and ecosystem restoration (ER) projects along the Texas coast.  This effort—the Coastal Texas Protection and Restoration Feasibility Study—has been variously referred to as the “Ike Dike,” after 2008’s Hurricane Ike, and the Coastal Spine, among other nicknames.  On October 26, 2018, the study team released a Draft Report and Environmental Impact Statement detailing a Tentatively Selected Plan (TSP) that employs a "multiple lines of defense" strategy, combining structural, natural, nature-based, and non-structural measures to provide resilient, redundant, robust, and adaptable solutions that promote life safety based on local site conditions and societal values of the coastal community.  In a comprehensive fashion, the TSP considers the risks posed by the combination of economic damage from coastal storm surge, inland shoreline erosion, Gulf shoreline erosion, loss of threatened and endangered critical habitats, and disrupted hydrology.  The TSP proposes the restoration of ecosystems—including 160,000 acres of coastal habitats including marshes, beaches, islands, and lagoons up and down the Texas coast—to enhance coastal resilience system-wide.  The TSP was open to public comment in late 2018 through February 2019, and it is now being further refined based on that feedback.  To remain updated on developments regarding this project, you may wish to visit coastalstudy.texas.gov, the joint USACE-GLO website on the subject.