RV Contractor Laying Pipe To Run Stormwater Through Detention Pond Wall Into Park
This morning I returned to the Laurel RV Springs Resort construction site and found contractors burying pipe in the trench they dug through the wall of the detention pond last Saturday.
The pipe leads from the inside to the outside of the pond near Harris County Precinct 4’s new Edgewater Park. This is not an overflow measure. The intake is at the bottom of the pond.
The RV owners are burying a permanent conduit to drain silty stormwater into the park’s wetlands and cypress ponds.
See below.
Pipe Not On Plans
This pipe does not appear anywhere on approved drainage plans for the RV Park’s detention pond.
Furthermore, the City explicitly prohibits letting runoff cross another’s property.
Does the second sentence about exceeding capacity of the City of Houston storm sewer system have the developer worried? Could that be the reason for the pipe?
I became suspicious on Saturday when I saw black pipe piled near where plans called for reinforced concrete pipe (see below). That pipe looks suspiciously like the pipe now being covered up by the contractor, although in fairness, I did not see them move the pipe.
Controversy Continues to Swirl Around Pond
From the start, controversy has swirled about the size of the detention pond. The RV park received its construction permits one day before new regulations went into effect. The new regs would have required virtually doubling the size of the pond.
The approved plans explicitly state that stormwater will be pumped from the pond into the Lakewood Cove storm sewer system. From there it would run downhill into the Lakewood Cove detention pond on the east side of Laurel Springs Lane near Hamblen Road. But residents say that pond is now shallow from silt accumulations over the years. And they worry about trying to accommodate their own runoff as well as a developer’s.
This morning’s discovery of the contractor burying pipe into the park is just the latest irregularity. On Saturday, they trenched into the park to drain the pond. Before that they pumped water over the side of the pond into the park. And they’ve been bringing fill into the site instead of moving it from the detention pond.
How they operate with such impunity bewilders me. We definitely need the county attorney to investigate.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 1/31/2022
1616 Days since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
