San Diego Environmental Impacts

In San Diego there has recently been a weather event called an El Nino that has been causing San Diego and it’s citizens trouble. What an El Nino does is temporarily changing the climate of an area. For San Diego’s instance, it has been creating downpours that have been damaging roadways, buildings, cars, has caused erosion and collapsing of rocks and trees, flooding in parking structures and of crops, and a multitude more cases of devastation to San Diego. With all of that destruction, one can only question how San Diego is financially impacted, and ask how the costs of the El Nino will be covered. Even though most repairs could be done by the public and letting them sort out the damages themselves, San Diego will likely have to pay more
There are bound to be damages to buildings and property, but when over 55,000 citizens live in flooding zones and about 5,000 businesses reside in flood areas, there are likely to be some repercussions. While sounding like being in a flood zone is a bit alarming, what is more frightening is how San Diego had to give out over $1.6 million dollars to people who lived in Del Mar for the damages that were caused in the 1998 El Nino. This doesn’t even cover everyone’s flooding costs. Since most people take for granted how sunny and beautiful San Diego’s weather is the majority of the time, most people don’t recognize the eminent threat of flooding and don’t usually pay for flood insurance, even if they live in a flood prone zone. Also, the city has to account for the public buildings that are in flooding areas because the cost of relocation, repair and many other
One example of how much money might need to be budgeted out is how much the two previous El Nino caused in damages. In 1997-98 the damages were around $804 million dollars in damages across California, and about $2.04 billion worth of damages in the 1982-83 El Nino. Another item to think about is how the streets and sinkholes and other city damages will have to be paid for, as well as emergency services all being called out to different areas to take care of other crises like police officers needing to direct traffic as well as respond to crashes due to rainy conditions, on top of their regular duties of helping to keep the crime rates low. A few emergencies might be higher priority like sinkholes on top of gas lines and such, so this may cause for havoc because of other incidents being prioritized above.

Indeed, while most repairs could be done by public, San Diego's economy is impacted greatly and will take a hard hit financially after this El Nino. With the costs of the residences in flood zones, the costs of crops and the repercussions of those crops, and the under-budgeting that San Diego has done for repairs. These affect the overall economy of San Diego, and how the people will have to pay more for our crops, and might have to pay more in their taxes to cover the city’s costs of