Southeast Texas Flood Control District Could Dissolve on Monday
August 16, 2025 – At its August 18, 2025 meeting, the Board of Directors of the Southeast Texas Flood Control District will discuss dissolving the District and taking all action necessary, through legal counsel, to formally close out all banking accounts and to satisfy any outstanding debts. See the agenda here.
District Formed After Imelda
The Southeast Texas Flood Control District, LGC is a local government corporation of Hardin, Jefferson, Orange, Chambers, Liberty, Newton, Jasper and Tyler Counties. They created it to coordinate flood-control efforts among the sponsoring counties and regional drainage districts, conservation districts, municipalities and other regional entities and communities.
The counties adopted the resolution approving the district in 2020. That was shortly after Tropical Storm Imelda dumped as much as 43 inches of rain over parts of Southeast Texas from Galveston to Beaumont in 2019.
Hurricane Harvey had created even more devastation throughout the same areas just two years earlier.
Original Purpose of District Now Duplicated
The hope articulated in the articles of incorporation was that the District could protect residents, infrastructure, industry, businesses and housing against flooding by improving, enlarging and integrating damage-reduction systems.
This PowerPoint presentation explains more about the background, purpose, and origins of the group.
When asked why the group was considering dissolving, Fred Jackson, Executive Director of the District, said that the need had not gone away but the group’s efforts were duplicated by other groups that had also sprung up.
I could find no website for the Southeast Texas Flood Control District. Several flood control experts in Harris County had never even heard of it. So, it appears the vision may not have come together quite the way the founders hoped.
Need for Flood-Mitigation Simplification to Facilitate Cross-Jurisdictional Solutions
The fate of the Southeast Texas Flood Control District underscores the difficulty of coordinating multiple government agencies from municipal to federal across wide areas. Rural areas may find it especially hard to navigate the jurisdictional labyrinth. That’s why the bipartisan bill to streamline FEMA recently introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is so important.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 8/16/2025
2909 Days since Hurricane Harvey
