Structures at Risk in Forest Cove

New Resources from the San Jacinto Flood Planning Group

The San Jacinto Regional Flood Planning Group (SJRFPG) has greatly expanded its website and published a new interactive dashboard for the 11 counties drained by the river. Both represent valuable resources for anyone in the region concerned about flood mitigation.

If you missed the virtual meeting this evening on the Group’s Draft Flood Plan, here’s another chance to review it and give public input.

Expanded Website

The Flood Planning Group’s expanded website branched out from a modest home page originally designed to solicit input and allow people to sign up for a distribution list.

Clicking on the About page now takes you to a treasure trove of information about the region; the counties and cities in it; major lakes and reservoirs; the flood plan; members; and committees.

The Meetings page takes you to a calendar and an archive of meeting minutes, agenda, and videos.

Resources takes you to information from the Texas Water Development Board about the flood planning process.

You’ll find the DRAFT San Jacinto Regional Flood Plan under Technical documents. You’ll also find a web form to submit public comment like Nephew Izzy did. They will accept public comments until October 29, 2022. (Here’s a summary of the recommendations in Chapter 5 that I published shortly after the release in August.)

But the magic of the evening was a useful new dashboard for helping to understand flooding impacts in the world around us.

New Interactive Dashboard

The dashboard contains volumes of data in a graphic format synthesized from multiple geospatial resources. Want to know what’s happening where? Click on a county then an object. Pop up boxes describe each point. You can also see a graphic count of the total matching resources on the right hand side.

From SJRFPG dashboard.

Turn different layers on and off to highlight certain types of information:

  • Regional boundaries
  • Flood infrastructure points, lines and polygons
  • Counties
  • Watersheds.

Select from 28 different basemaps that range from street maps to topographical maps and satellite images. And zoom from the 11-county region down to your house!

Clicking the tabs along the bottom pulls up different features of the dashboard.

  • Existing flood risk
  • Future flood risk
  • Existing mitigation
  • Flood risk reduction actions.

For instance, click on the future flood risk tab. Zoom into an area of interest, such as Forest Cove. See below.

Future Flood Risk Tab of SJRFPG dashboard.

Different types of information pop up this time. For instance, you can see the extent of floodplains in solid colors. You can also see:

  • Residential and commercial buildings at risk
  • Roadways at risk
  • Industrial buildings
  • Power generation
  • Public buildings
  • Bridges and more

If you want to know what’s at risk where you live, the San Jacinto Regional Flood Planning Group has given you a great way to compile an inventory.

More to Follow

There’s much more here than I can fit in a post. Explore. Open eyes. Amaze your friends and family.

Just one caution. The flood plains are not based on Atlas-14. They still use pre-Harvey data. The dashboard is a work in progress and will be updated when FEMA releases the new flood maps this winter.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 9/29/2022

1857 Days since Hurricane Harvey