Woodridge-Taylor Gully Construction Starts Again

5/19/26 – Contractors working on the Woodridge Village-Taylor Gully Project finally appeared yesterday and started working today. Construction on the site had been paused since November, 2023.

That’s when Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) cancelled an Excavation and Removal Contract with Sprint Sand & Clay to apply for a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) from the Texas General Land Office and US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

This particular CDBG project falls in the Mitigation Category. That means, HCFCD and the contractors have until March 31, 2028 to finish it – about a year and ten months.

History of Project

All this comes seven years after Perry Homes cleared approximately 270 acres on its Woodridge Village property, and sloped the land toward Taylor Gully … without building the required detention basins. Then the flooding problems started. Taylor Gully flooded up to 600 homes twice in 2019, once on May 7 and once in September during Tropical Storm Imelda.

Harris County and City of Houston bought the property from Perry Homes in 2020. That let Sprint Sand & Clay start excavating a giant detention basin on Woodridge. They removed 156,478 cubic yards of sediment. That brought the total detention on the site up to Atlas-14 requirements, But per HUD requirements, HCFCD had to stop Sprint while it applied for a grant, which Congressman Dan Crenshaw helped secure.

However, work stopped before the basin was finished and it was never connected to the rest of the drainage on the site. See below.

Woodridge village excavation at end of October 2023 — *Woodridge Village in November 2023 when E&R contract ended. Note storm sewer pipe scattered around excavation.*

Sprint removed all that dirt for less than a thousand dollars. The picture above shows how the site looked the day Sprint left. They gave the current contractors a giant head start.

Site Clean Up Started Today

Today, after a hiatus of almost three years, a new contractor started by cleaning up the site. I photographed them breaking up the old storm sewer pipe unearthed by Sprint.

*Woodridge Village on 5/19/2026*. *Note contractors breaking up storm sewers that Perry had installed near detention basin excavation.*

I counted three pieces of construction equipment onsite today: a small bulldozer, an excavator that was breaking up the pipe. And a forklift that ferried pipe to the excavator.

I didn’t see any other equipment on Woodridge or along Taylor Gully.

*Looking upstream along Taylor Gully from West Lake Houston Parkway toward Rustic Elms and Woodridge.*

*Looking downstream toward the end of Taylor Gully.*

What Project Includes

On 10/6/25, the Texas General Land Office (GLO) approved approximately $42 million to construct Taylor Gully Channel Conveyance Improvements and a Woodridge Stormwater Detention Basin.

On 3/26/26, the county purchasing agent approved a $29,387,654 bid from Bryce Construction & Design, LLC to finish constructing the Woodridge and Taylor Gully flood mitigation projects in Kingwood

*The Woodridge portion of the project (above the county line) includes 421.6 acre feet of additional stormwater detention capacity (Compartment shown in blue-shaded area above).*

Other planned improvements along Taylor Gully include:

13,118 feet of channel conveyance improvements
Placing a concrete channel along the base of it
Replacing the concrete culverts at Rustling Elms with an open-span bridge.

Altogether the plan should reduce the water surface elevation by up to 5 feet and help 24,000 thousand people who live near or commute through the area.

For more information about the project, see this PowerPoint by HCFCD.

It’s great to see this project moving again.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 5/19/2026

3185 Days since Hurricane Harvey