Raising houses not that costly
On Sunday, Nov. 4 there was a front page article in this paper that was titled: “Rising Hopes of Raising Homes Dashed.” It talked about the hopes that some citizens had that the homes in Blanco Gardens could be raised above the level of the May 2015 flood. It went on to say that there is a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Program that is administered by the Texas Water Development Board and can be used to raise eligible structures after a flood. Flood Mitigation Assistance funds can be used to “reduce or eliminate the risk of repetitive flood damage to buildings and structures insured under the National Flood Insurance Program,” according to the grant description. “Such funds were used to raise some previous homes along the Guadalupe River in Guadalupe County.”
The article went on to say: “San Marcos considered the flood mitigation assistance option, engineering chief Laurie Moyer told the San Marcos City Council at a work session meeting on Oct. 16, but there were problems with eligibility, feasibility and the cost-benefit ratio.
Moyer mentioned that at public meetings about the city’s Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Relief (CDBG-DR) infrastructure projects, the idea of raising houses instead of spending millions on berms and new channels had come up in discussions.
“We did submit a FEMA request for hazard mitigation funding” right after the 2015 floods, Moyer said, “and we went through the benefit-cost analysis for Blanco Gardens. … Actually, the elevation of homes had the lowest benefit-to-cost ratio on it.
“City spokesman Trey Hatt said that information from Guadalupe County indicated that the cost of raising a 1,000- to 1,100-square-foot home would range from about $135,500 to $178,000, depending on the type of foundation. Those numbers did not improve the cost-benefit ratio.
“Moyer said that many homeowners had concerns other than just keeping their houses above water.”
But there is a major problem here. And it has to do with the estimates on the prices to elevate homes. Now, I’m not sure why it costs as much as $178,000 to elevate a 1,000 foot home in Guadalupe County. Maybe they were raising the homes 20 feet in the air or something. But Paula and I (here in Caldwell County) were able to raise our 2,100 square foot home (and the decks that were attached to it) approximately 4 feet higher than it had been, for a total of $32,000.
Our neighbors, Duane and Evelyn TeGrotenhuis, raised their 2,000 square foot home 3 feet for $13,650. They already had some solid pads to put the double cinder blocks on, we had to pour 100 columns with large pads to support them.
I don’t know exactly how much money it’s going to take to raise some of the smaller homes in Blanco Gardens, but I have a pretty good sense that it isn’t going to cost anywhere near the $70,000 per home that the city intends to spend on the berm and ditch.
And, please keep in mind that the berm and ditch will not save that subdivision in the event of another 500 year flood. The berm and ditch is only designed to save the subdivision in the event of a 100 year flood. Raising the homes a couple of feet above the May 2015 flood (which is being called the 1,000 year flood) is the only thing that makes sense.
As for saving the cars, I can only suggest that we all move our cars to higher ground when we know a flood is coming.
We can either get out of the way of a flood or we can try to move the flood away from us. But remember that the May 2015 flood had the Blanco flowing with the same volume as the Mississippi River when it is cooking. The US government has tried for a century to move that river around and it hasn’t worked out very well.
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Tom Goynes owns San Marcos River Retreat and is president of the Texas Rivers Protection Association and multiple-year winner of the Texas Water Safari
