https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/15/climate/trump-flood-protection-rules-infrastructure.html (sadly, not a gift link)

«In the summer of 2017, Donald Trump stood in the lobby of Trump Tower and declared he would heal a “massive self-inflicted wound on our country” by eliminating red tape that he said was making construction in America an arduous, expensive process.

One policy he eradicated that day was a set of standards aimed at ensuring that anything built with taxpayer money — including hospitals, sewage treatment plants, bridges and libraries — could withstand flooding and rising seas caused by climate change.

…

When Trump was elected, he took aim at every policy linked to the phrase “climate change” and repealed it. President Biden reinstated the standard, which went into effect at most agencies this year.

Quantifying the effects of the standard’s seven-year absence is no easy feat. But Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, said “hundreds of millions if not billions” had been spent on buildings that are unprepared for intense floods.

Can the standard’s elimination be blamed for damage caused by Hurricane Helene or Hurricane Milton? At this stage, officials said, it’s hard to say.

In part that is because there are no national data sets showing infrastructure spending in flood plains. Helene was a one-in-1,000-year hurricane that might have damaged structures even with stricter codes. And finally, federal data might not capture state or local decisions to impose stricter rules even in the absence of federal requirements.

That’s what happened in Hendersonville, N.C., which was deluged during three days of unrelenting precipitation from Hurricane Helene. Adam Steurer, the city’s utilities director, said that when the town built a new drinking water pumping station a few years ago on the banks of the French Broad River, engineers opted to build to 500-year flood levels.

“It was a very early discussion we had because this area goes underwater all the time,” Steurer said. He said that the cost difference was negligible and that putting electrical equipment at higher elevation gave the pumping station extra resiliency. The station is still being assessed, but officials do not believe it was badly damaged by Helene, he said.

…

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

If he wins the White House in November, Trump is widely expected to again eliminate climate policies, including the flood standards.»