Forget about that 100-year flood nonsense

For years I've been hearing things like the levees along the Trinity River must be built to withstand something close to the 100-year flood, so named because the chances of such a catastrophe are so rare, it would only occur, at most, once every 100 years.

Bunk.

I have absolutely no scientific research to base this on and, even if I did I probably wouldn't understand it (science was never my strong subject), but I think we need to completely throw out this all-too-rare flood business. I am convinced that global warming is having a drastically negative effect on our climate. Winters are becoming colder, summers hotter, storms more intense. Weather extremes are widening. I don't recall in my lifetime a tsumami of the intensity that struck Sumartra in 2004. Now another one has ravaged Japan just seven years later. Look how much more intense hurricanes have become in the last three years.

So forget and abandon this 100-year flood business. I expect one to hit us within the next 20 years, at the latest. And then another one less than 10 years after that. So here's my message to the Corps of Engineers: Re-calculate that 100 year flood to say, at best, a 15-year-flood, and make sure our levees are built to withstand that kind of constant barrage. Our lives and our livelihoods depend on it.