Most Projects To Address Lake Houston Flooding Still Not Started
After the floods of early May 2024 and as we got yet another flood warning (East Fork at FM1485), people are asking once again, “What can we do to reduce our flood risk?” Ironically, with a few exceptions, the answers are the same as those identified after Harvey. We just need to implement them.
Few of the action items identified years ago have been implemented. Meanwhile, many underlying conditions that contribute to flood risk, i.e., insufficiently mitigated upstream development and sand mining, are accelerating. Sometimes it feels that as fast as we fix things up, others muck them up.
Could have Been Much, Much Worse
The Lake Houston Area narrowly escaped a disaster during the early May floods. A small number of homes flooded. However, a far larger number were almost seriously damaged. Had storms dumped a little more water in the wrong places, that flood could have easily destroyed thousands of homes. Water was lapping at their foundations.
Ironically, the amount of water that caused the flooding this May was about a third of what we received during Harvey.
That should underscore how vulnerable people in the Lake Houston Area remain to flooding. So, let’s look back at what happened to recommendations that came out of Hurricane Harvey studies.
Recommendations from 2020 San Jacinto River Watershed Master Drainage Plan
After Harvey, Harris County Flood Control, Montgomery County, the San Jacinto River Authority and the City of Houston joined forces to identify ways to reduce flood risk in the San Jacinto River Basin.
In December 2020, they published a 3,600 page study called the San Jacinto Regional Watershed Master Drainage Plan.
Pages 36-38 of the executive summary contain recommendations. Page 38 identifies and quantifies the value of 16 recommended flood-mitigation projects.
Short-Term Strategies (Page 36)
- Vision Group – to promote collaboration and momentum
- Policy – standardizing minimum requirements for future development
- Floodplain Preservation – to prevent increases in future flood risk
- Flood Monitoring and Warning Enhancements – adding gages along major streams
- Flood Response – enhancing communication, identifying and prioritizing flood prone areas, and developing public education strategies
- Buyouts – to remove homes and businesses that flood frequently from the floodplain
- Floodplain Re-Mapping – to inform people of changes to their risk. Water surface elevations in a 100-year flood have increased between .5 and 4.5 feet with the adoption of Atlas 14.
- Watershed Protection Studies – for each sub watershed to identify where we need local drainage improvements.
Long-Term Strategies (Page 37)
- Adoption of “No adverse impact” Policy – to ensure upstream mitigation efforts don’t increase downstream flooding
- Right of Way Acquisition – purchasing land for future flood mitigation projects
- Utilities and Roadways – protecting evacuation routes and critical infrastructure during planning
- Project Phasing to Overcome Funding Constraints – due to the high cost of mitigation projects.
16 Specific Channel and Stormwater-Detention Projects (Page 38)
See project rankings in table below along with projected costs.
Subsequent portions of the report describe each recommendation in each category in more detail. You can find all sections on the HCFCD website. They total hundreds of megabytes.
Not Much Has Happened in Last Four Years
Sadly, while elected officials have been busy chasing funding, not much has been accomplished on the ground in any of these three categories that would actually reduce flood risk. Said another way, we’ve seen little construction. We’ve seen most progress in the first category.
Short-Term Solutions:
Vision Group: The San Jacinto Regional Flood Planning Group was recommended to pull together recommendations for the State’s first flood plan. A draft was released last week.
Policy: Montgomery County is revising its drainage criteria manual. But county commissioners have not yet adopted it. Neither MoCo, nor Liberty County have adopted the minimum drainage standards for areas draining into Harris County.
Floodplain Preservation is spotty. Non-profits, such as the Bayou Land Conservancy have stepped up. And some governmental agencies have discouraged floodplain development. But loopholes exist in regulations and enforcement is lacking in many places even if regulations exist.
Flood Monitoring and Warning Enhancements – SJRA installed several gages upstream from Lake Conroe, but more are still needed. In the last flood, they still couldn’t tell exactly how much water was coming in so that they could match releases to stabilize the lake level.
Flood Response: Harris County Flood Control stepped up its warnings and provided updated river forecasts two to three times a day. The SJRA did too. The Mayor had multiple press conferences in the Kingwood area before and during the flood. He worked with first responders to make sure people were kept out of harms way. That was a far cry from Harvey where a quarter of all the deaths in the county happened in Kingwood. And elderly people found themselves trapped by rising floodwaters in the middle of the night.
Buyouts – HCFCD bought out the townhomes along Marina Drive in Forest Cove that flooded repeatedly. And Montgomery County has also bought up many properties that flooded repetitively. But many more remain.
Floodplain Re-Mapping – FEMA has yet to approve Harris County’s updated flood maps. They’re still approximately three years from completion.
Watershed Protection Studies – Some have been done. Other’s haven’t even started. It’s been spotty. Little has been done with the studies already completed. And no grants will be approved without studiers.
Long-Term Solutions:
“No adverse impact” is violated more than the Ten Commandments.
Right of Way Acquisition – has moved forward on several properties in the Cypress Creek watershed and Harris County bought the 270-acre Woodridge Village Property in Montgomery County from Perry Homes.
Roadways – Lake Houston Redevelopment Authority/TIRZ 10 is expanding Northpark Drive and building an all-weather evacuation route out of Kingwood. It includes a bridge over the UP Railroad Tracks. FM2100 and FM1960 are expanding in Harris County. But the Huffman-Cleveland Road is still cut off in Liberty County. The Grand Parkway has been completed. But FM1485 right next to it has been cut off by floodwaters twice already this year.
Project Phasing – is a standard practice in the industry. But projects associated with the flood bond are moving so slowly that inflation has cost us about 20% of the bond’s purchasing power. Where will the money come from to complete all the projects?
Specific Projects
Not one of these projects listed in the table above has started construction. None is even close. No land has been acquired for any. And yet, unlike studies, these things actually protect property when floodwaters rise.
Engineers looked into Project #2 (Walnut Creek Detention), but by the time they investigated, someone had already purchased the land and announced plans to build a solar farm on it.
Where to Go From Here
Net: We’ve picked some of the low-hanging fruit. But we have a long way to go. Especially with construction projects that actually protect property.
As I interviewed people for this post, it became clear that different entities with different interests has hampered many mitigation efforts. We walk between competing, balkanized fiefdoms.
No one anywhere speaks for all the people of this watershed.
Just as bad, the business processes surrounding flood mitigation sometimes become bewilderingly complex. Many smaller counties, cities and MUDs don’t have the expertise to even apply for grants.
Even worse, some groups undermine improvements. For instance, we’ve dredged the mouth of the Kingwood Diversion Ditch at River Grove Park twice since Hurricane Harvey. And now it needs it again – as the West Fork flows through a sand pit. Even before floodwaters have receded, you can already see sediment poking up through the water. For decades the dredging interval was about once every eight years.
The people of a river basin are inextricably bound together by water. Yet our personal interests (What’s in it for me?) and political boundaries still divide us.
We need to recognize that fact and develop better ways to design solutions. More on that in a future post. I’ll also discuss some things that the San Jacinto River Basin Plan did not address.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 5/14/24
2450 Days since Hurricane Harvey
