New Web Page Helps Users Explore HCFCD Spending Trends

4/22/25 – HCFCD has added Microsoft Power BI capabilities to its website. They let users interactively explore and visualize HCFCD spending by watershed. Data goes back to the start of the 2018 Flood Bond. Users can even sort spending data by:

Source of funds (Bond, district taxes, or partners)
Bond Project ID
Calendar year and quarter
Watershed
Project group
Funding source
Project stage
Type of activity

See below.

*Total HCFCD spending by watershed between start of flood bond and end of Q1 2025*

Using those “filters” on the left-hand side of the page instantly reconfigures two charts:

Watersheds in a bar graph, rank ordered by selected filters (shown above)
Incremental and cumulative spending over time using selected filter(s) (shown below).

The BI in Power BI stands for Business Intelligence. It’s an extremely powerful and fast way to explore massive data sets online.

By “right clicking” on a selection on a PC (or “control clicking” on a Mac), users can pull up tabular breakdowns of the data with exact amounts using any variables they select. From there, they can drill up or down in the data.

Analysis that used to take weeks can now be done in seconds.
Bob Rehak

Thank you Microsoft and thank you HCFCD.

Differences Between New and Previous Visualizations

There is one huge difference between the reports I have been compiling from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and the Microsoft Power BI information. I tracked HCFCD spending from Hurricane Harvey starting in the fourth quarter of 2017. The Power BI data starts after voters approved the flood bond a year AFTER Harvey.

Instead of making FOIA requests each quarter, I plan to use this data from now on. There’s a little less of it. But the improvement in convenience will make analysis much faster.

What Latest Data Shows

Several things jump out at you when you first come to the new HCFCD spending page. Since Q3 2018:

HCFCD has spent more than twice as much on County-Wide Projects (which include subdivision drainage projects) as it has on any single watershed.
More than half of all spending has gone to County-Wide Projects and four watersheds: Cypress Creek, Brays Bayou, White Oak Bayou and Greens Bayou.
The overall spending rate is now 39% of what it was at the peak of activity in 2020. Compare the next two screen captures.

*Spending through Q1 2025 by project phase.*

Note: the graphs above make the spending drop look even sharper than it is. Remember the second graph shows only one quarter of spending for 2025 versus whole-year spending for other years.

To calculate 39%, I annualized Q1 2025 spending. 2024, the last full year of spending, is down 54% compared to 2020.

Drilling down a little bit in the data, I also learned that, to date, the San Jacinto watershed (the County’s largest) has had only $18 million invested in construction of flood-mitigation improvements. That’s less than a fifth of what the top four dollar getters have received.

*When looking at construction spending only, the entire San Jacinto Watershed has received only $18 million out of $900 million spent by HCFCD since Harvey.*

That’s less than 2% of the spending that actually reduces flooding. Other investments in the watershed have primarily been studies that talk about plans for improvements without really making them.

Where to Find Power BI Graphs, Tables

The Microsoft Power BI tables are buried on the HCFCD site. To see them, you click on:

The Activity Page, which contains only one sentence of copy.
The Learn More Button on the Activities page.

Or go straight to: www.HCFCD.org/activity

I asked HCFCD why the page is buried. They responded that the page has only been up for about a month and that they are still making some usability tweaks before advertising it widely.

Below are some other things I would do to improve the user experience.

Wish List

While much more user friendly than an Excel spreadsheet, the HCFCD’s Power BI page could benefit from some instructions. For instance, there are no instructions on how to find the underlying data (right- or control-clicking).

*Q1 2025 data revealed by control-clicking on the Q1 2025 line in the second Incremental Spending graph above.*

And through experimentation, I learned that “command clicking” on a Mac lets you select multiple variables in a filter, i.e., multiple watersheds, years, etc.

HCFCD used to be able to sort this data by precinct.

They also have information about the low-to-moderate income populations in each watershed and the amount of damage per watershed in various storms. But that sorting option isn’t available either.

A cross-link to project descriptions so that users can easily select projects of interest to them would also help. Right now, they’re asked to choose from a long list of numbers that are meaningless to most people. I had to open the project list archived on ReduceFlooding to identify what was what. It sure would be helpful to include that data, too.

Making data readily available has a way of anchoring political debates in reality. And that, in my humble opinion, is a valuable thing. It creates a data-driven culture that brings people together rather than having them argue over rumors.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 4/22/25

2793 Days since Hurricane Harvey