For more on the president's visit today and the damage caused by these deadly Texas was and what needs to be done. Next, we turned to George P. Bush, the former commissioner of the Texas General Land Office. Commissioner Bush, Welcome back to Bloomberg.
It's good to see you.
Everyone's been an expert on response and rescue operations over the past couple of days. I'm wondering what Texans actually want the extent to which they want the government to be involved here enhancing infrastructure for early warning.
Well, I suspect that in July twenty one, when the special session gabbles back in, that the legislature will go back to the bill that was administered this past session.
But was unsuccessful.
It was a half a billion dollar package to create an early detection and warning system with respect to a state that, unfortunately, is subject to the most amount of natural disasters than any other state in America.
People forget, since.
Nineteen eighty our state has had more federal declarations in any other state, and then ranges from flat floods such as the one that we've seen in Curville to devastating storms like Hurricane Harvey, which I happen to preside over as the Land Commissioner, leading the state's largest housing recovery, and I think it was the second largest in American
history behind Katrina. This storm is nothing short of devastating, but as you know, politicians typically respond after the fact instead of preparing before the devastating events.
But we need to focus on the positives here.
I believe legislators will reconvene past that half a billion dollar package that will implement early communication and warning systems along the Guadaloup, similar to what was done in the Wimberley storms from twenty sixteen, where the Blanco River Authority did set aside the dollars to create that early detection system that com mitigate lives that we need to prepare better for these storms.
Well, when we consider the preparation and you speak to some of the recent natural disasters that the State of Texas has experienced, does it also need to be better adaptation and mitigation to what is a changing environment.
Absolutely.
When I was Lank Commissioner, I advocated for the largest storm surge barrier in American history. After Katrina, New Orleans and Louisiana were successful in obtaining a federal appropriation to create two swinging levees that now largely protect New Orleans from a devastating Category three plus storms. In fact, they've had a few storms and this system has actually worked.
It's been accomplished.
Before in American history, and we can do it again as Texans, whether it's flash floods or devastating storms that could hit the Galveston area.
But I'm a big.
Believer if you look at the economics of natural disasters and the recovery, it's so much cheaper at the federal level to allow states, counties, and cities to come forward to the federal government with well thought out plans that are NEPA compliant and working with the US corp of Engineers to.
Help mitigate those future storms.
Because, believe it or not, our climate is changing and violent storms like this will continue happening. So we can choose one path, which is to respond and ask taxpayers from other parts of the country to fund it, or we can come together as a country and put together those plans and better prepare and develop that infrastructure beforehand.
Stories like these, unfortunately have a way of falling off the front page pretty quickly. Commissioner Bush once that's the case, and we're onto other things and whatever the crisis of the day may be in politics, what will be happening on the ground in Texas?
How long will it take to clean this up?
Man? I'm hearing estimates of several months, if not yours. I mean, going back to the experience at Hurricane Harvey, we were cleaning debris for over a year, attaining federal waivers and permits to allow us to just burn the trash. I remember an estimate that every single landfill in the state of Texas was inundated with debris.
And if you look at just these images.
That are occurring on the Guadalupe River, and if you can visualize a wall of water in excess of thirty feet in all the debris that are along the Balconi's escarpment along that way, this is going to take a long time.
But as a former leader.
In Texas, I can tell you that the people of Texas are so resilient and strong. There are tens of thousands of volunteers, including my church River Bend, which is on the ground in a church in curable helping people respond and getting badly needed supplies. And what's crazy about this Joe is that there are still over one hundred people missing. I mean, we are still in the search and rescue aspect of what's occurring here, and it's been
a week, so recovery is never easy. Unfortunately, we're already pointing fingers at one another. But first things first, we've got to save lives.
That is absolutely true. We should keep that in before we let you go, Commissioner. We just have a minute left here. But if a state like Texas, with its size and capacity, still needs the support of the federal government to respond to a disaster like this, what does it tell you about changes that should or should not be made to FEMA.
I've long been an advocate for reorganizing FEMA and consolidating the disaster recovery components of what it does, along with the numerous other federal agencies in.
Washington, DC that responded disasters.
To make it simple, cut through the bureaucratic red tape for local, county and state wide officials. Just one quick example from Hurricane Harvey. To rebuild a home, it required over sixteen permits from different agencies underneath the National Environmental Protection Act. And if we can just cut through the red tape, essentially block rant the dollars down to the states, counties, and cities to allow them to adjudicate the recovery process. I assure you that most states are going to do
it better than the federal government. Are certain just jurisdictions that don't have that experience like we do in Texas, But there's a lot that we can do at the federal level, all right.
George P. Bush, former Commissioner of Texas General Land Office, thank you so much for joining us.