Change Texas

How Harvey Will Change Texas

The storm’s most lasting legacy might be the end of the Lone Star State’s rugged individualism.

By RICHARD PARKER

Until Monday, Eldridge Park was an emerald subdivision surrounding a 40-acre park, in the upper-middle-class Sugarland suburb of Houston. Then, around 1:40 a.m., the water came. A foot of water became two. One flooded subdivision in Sugarland became 10. A few inundated homes became 3,000. The water will remain, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, for weeks.

Hurricane Harvey will set many heart-breaking records in its time hovering over Texas—from biblical rainfall to death tolls to massive economic damage. Yet as the storm trails away, its most lasting legacy might be how it punctures Texas’ famous ethos of self-reliance, embodied by the independence-era symbol on its state flag: the Lone Star.

Texans might pride themselves on their rugged individualism, but this time, they’ll have no choice but to accept years of state and federal help for the recovery. By the time Harvey leaves the city on Wednesday, Greater Houston will have been drenched with 1 trillion gallons of water and an estimated 30,000 people will be living in temporary housing. The Federal Emergency Management Agency expects to receive at least 450,000 claims for damage caused by the storm. And early estimates point to least $150 billion in total economic losses.

Stubborn self-reliance in Texas is as much fact as myth. It was likely born among the original Spanish settlers, who in the early 1700s were often as not ignored, 800 miles from Mexico City. In the 19th century, settlers were on their own against fierce tribes like the Comanche. Even today, Pecos County, in West Texas, boasts just three people per square mile.

But Texas politics hasn’t always been so averse to big government as it is now. Texas Democrats during their decades in power tended to stress ways to bridge Texas’ vast distances with government programs like rural electrification, dams and road-building. Populist agrarian policies meant to prop up farmers during monetary crises were a powerful force, as were the New Deal and its most important son: Lyndon Johnson, congressman, senator, vice president and later, the 36th president. Johnson was architect of the Texas dams and rural schools upon which he modeled the Great Society. Even Republicans like George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Rick Perry all talked the talk of individualism but practiced the politics of community.

All that has changed in Texas over the past several years as the far-right wing of the Republican Party has taken control not only of the state party but also the state government. When Gov. Greg Abbott won election in 2014, he said of his agenda: “We will celebrate the frontier spirit of rugged individualism.” Since then, he and the legislature have sought to limit government power—except their own. They have enabled individuals to more freely carry guns and knives and diverted taxpayer money from public to private schools. Most recently, Abbott led the failed effort to nullify local tree ordinances—regulations limiting tree removal—because these posed, Abbott argued, a threat to individual freedom.

But Harvey has changed all that.

“A Texas-sized storm requires a Texas-sized response, and that is exactly what the state will provide,” Abbott said Monday in Corpus Christi. “While we have suffered a great deal, the resiliency and bravery of Texans’ spirits is something that can never be broken. As communities are coming together in the aftermath of this storm, I will do everything in my power to make sure they have what they need to rebuild.”

This is a man whose signature boast was that he got up every day, went to work and sued the federal government, who has called for a constitutional convention to strip power from Washington and yet, on Monday, said, “To see the swift response from the federal government is pretty much unparalleled.”

He also gave FEMA an “A+” for its efforts. Which only makes sense: The agency has said it will be in Texas for years. Trailing Abbott and reassuring people that the federal government would be there to help was none other than Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who, along with Sen. Ted Cruz and much of the Texas House delegation, voted against storm relief for New York and New Jersey following Hurricane Sandy. “The congressional members in Texas are hypocrites and I said back in 2012 that they’d be proven to be hypocrites,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said, according to the Star-Ledger. “It was just a matter of time.”

The reality is that recovery from a major hurricane—and, in this case, unprecedented flooding—takes many years. The federal government will be setting up camps, delivering food and writing checks for what is likely to be a decade. It took that long for the federal government to finish spending the last $20 billion on recovering from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. By last count, only 60 percent of structures on Galveston Island destroyed by Ike in 2008 have been rebuilt. But Ike damaged a small city that is largely a beach getaway. Harvey swamped one of the largest engines of the U.S. economy; Houston’s gross product was last measured at over $400 billion per year.

People in the area will be needing help from each other and the government long after the boats are gone and the water has receded. Crop and livestock insurance will not cover all the damage left in ruined rice fields and by drowned cattle. In the suburbs as well as the city, most Houston property owners don’t have flood insurance. For many, there will be no workplaces to go to, let alone homes in which to live.

This future won’t haunt just Houston’s Democratic inner core. Despite its sprawling size—about that of Maryland—Houston’s population density of nearly 4,000 people per square mile extends into what are staunchly Republican suburbs, like Sugarland in Fort Bend County. Already, the residents of the leafy subdivisions are encountering a Katrina-like reality. They were flooded out because the Army Corps of Engineers opened the spillways of two nearby dams to avert a catastrophic dam break that would have sent an uncontrolled cascade swamping much of the county.

Suffering in the face of disaster knows no bounds, not even rugged individualism. I know: In 2015, my Texas town of Wimberley was struck in the dark by a 26-foot wall of water that took 11 lives, destroyed 1,000 homes and leveled a cypress forest of thousands of trees dating back to Columbus. Though a small town, Wimberley was not spread over a vast distance but crowded into a narrow valley with a population density twice that of the average in Texas.

When we emerged at daylight, there was little more humbling than a house full of mold, a lifetime of wrecked possessions, feeling dirty, drenched and powerless, literally. It is then that you find each other, like finding God. But you’re not just grateful for that neighbor. You need that Salvation Army food truck, those helicopters buzzing overhead and National Guard troops out front in the pitch dark of night. And you desperately need that FEMA check.

It will be interesting to watch Texas politics square itself with reality. Yes, self-reliance is a virtue. No man or woman, however, is an island—at least not on purpose. Harvey has proved that. So, if ever the era of going it entirely on your own in Texas ever existed, it’s over.