Good Midday to you House of Representatives! I put together this bill as part of my infrastructure promise (if you call this infrastructure). Many of you do not know this but I have a special place in my heart for things related to meteorology, I have been tracking weather patterns and events (along with natural disasters such as tsunamis and earthquakes) since I was in Kindergarten and so I have a special passion for this type of thing. The price tag can certainly be adjusted, but I come prepared with much research on why these types of research and implementation are needed. I also believe that Natural Disasters such as hurricanes and tsunamis are the single greatest threat to our national security.
I will start with some facts on storm surge and why research and implementation could help reduce or in some cases eliminate the threat of storm surge:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/surge/ Here we have a basic National Hurricane Center facts page on storm surge flooding along the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coastlines, it shows the vulnerability of some areas (you can see graphics on many of the main storm surge producers we have experienced over the years). One of the main things you should pay attention to however is the continental vs shelf comparison. One way we can research and implement this are creating artificial height changes eg. creating barrier islands to help slow the momentum of said waves or creating seawalls (such as they have on Galveston Island, Texas) or levees (such as what they have in New Orleans, LA if built right). The main research cost is A. studying the environmental impacts these methods would have as the Oceans, particularly the Gulf of Mexico, have very fragile marine environments which the Southern economy is highly dependent on in some cases, B. proper implementation, you wouldn't want cases like bad or failing levees like what we saw in New Orleans, LA during Hurricane Katrina. and C. Ensuring that these will truly stop hurricanes storm surge flooding through computer models and the like.
Now for tsunami based flooding:
http://www.livescience.com/48638-offshore-islands-boost-tsunami-flooding.html The first thing I must note is that on the Pacific Ocean side of things, and this is entirely based on Fremont so I would be curious to see what Prime Minister Truman has to say on this issue, but small islands will not work on the Fremont side as studies show they actually amplify tsunami waves (but stop storm surge waves).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1386978/The-Japanese-mayor-laughed-building-huge-sea-wall--village-left-untouched-tsunami.html (Please excuse the source, the information is backed with citations) Next I want to take a look at what we see in Japan, seawalls and floodgates work well against Tsunamis and seem to be the only way to really stop them. This is also the case in Crescent City, CA where a seawall is in place that helped stop the 2011 Japan Earthquake and Tsunami's impacts on the West Coast in that particular city, where the landscape helps to enhances tsunami waves.
Finally, on the tsunami front I'd like to explain why I am so concerned about the threat of a Pacific Tsunami. This does not apply as much to California (at least the southern part) as it does to Oregon and Washington.
https://pnsn.org/outreach/earthquakesources/csz In the Pacific Northwest exists an area called the "Cascadia Subduction Zone", much hype has been made over the San Andreas Fault, but the Cascadia Subduction Zone is far more dangerous as it is capable of producing earthquakes of up to or over 9.0 in magnitude on the Richter Scale. This would create very large tsunami waves along the Pacific Coastline, that if unchecked would devastate coastal communities and destroy the economy of Fremont for a long time to come. If there are any leftover funds, I would propose looking into implementing an earthquake alert system (as they do in Japan and Chile) which gives residents near an Earthquake's epicenter as much as 1 minute's warning as to when a large earthquake is about to occur.
I have much more on these subjects if anyone has any more questions. Thanks for your consideration!
