Bill McCabe of the Lake Houston Area Flood Prevention Initiative submitted this letter in response to the SJRA’s Request for Public Input on its Sediment Removal and Sand Trap Pilot Study proposal. He raises a concern that no one else has so far: The proposal may run afoul of the recently adopted Best Management Practices […]
(Updated 4/15/22 with additional information.) The high-level brain drain among department heads and their deputies in Harris County Government compromises both service and productivity. An article in The Texan about the fiasco at Universal Services, Harris County’s IT department, discussed the department’s new CIO. A system used by law enforcement, prosecutors, and the courts went down […]
On April 11, 2022, I read an outstanding guest editorial in the New York Times by Elizabeth Rush, a professor in the English Department at Brown University. The title: “I never would have bought this home if I knew it flooded.” It’s a story about the systemic causes of flooding and common-sense solutions that seem […]
Deep-time Digital Earth is a consortium of international organizations, geological surveys, research institutes and industry. It’s the first “Big Science Program” of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS). The group hopes to transform Earth science by “harmonizing global, Deep-time Digital Earth data, and sharing global geoscience knowledge. Massive Data Integration Effort Think of this […]
The media-savvy think tank that owns the Laurel Springs RV Resort has finally figured out a way to cover up permit violations from neighbors who complain to the City of Houston, Harris County and the State of Texas. They’ve simply put up signs prohibiting photography that threaten prosecution. And they’ve installed slats in their chain-link […]
The Bayou Land Conservancy has added its voice to those raising concerns about the SJRA’s sand trap proposal for the San Jacinto River watershed. The pilot project began out of a desire to reduce sediment buildup in the mouth bar of the West Fork. But it has morphed into something very different – a trench […]
Researchers at Colorado State University indicate that we should get ready for an above average hurricane season in 2022. They say Texas in particular has the following chances of a named storm, hurricane or major hurricane tracking within 50 miles of the coast this year: 80% for a named storm 54% for a hurricane 25% […]
On Tuesday, April 5, 2022, Harris County Commissioners Court reaffirmed the need for minimum drainage standards in the region. The program called “Fix Flooding First,” was started in 2020 by the Harris County Engineering Department. It is designed to help prevent flooding, not just fix it. The idea: to bring all municipalities and other counties […]
If you managed to watch Harris County Commissioners Court yesterday, near the end you saw a lively and somewhat confusing discussion of flood mitigation funding. See the video at approximately 6:38:10. Agenda Item 249 was a request by Adrian Garcia to discuss disbursement of the $750 million in Community Development Block Grant Mitigation funds allocated […]
According to minutes of the Coastal Water Authority (CWA) February 9 board meeting posted in March, work on the project to add more gates to Lake Houston was paused in January while the City of Houston updated the project’s benefit-cost ratio. CWA Board Minutes Give High-Level Overview of Concerns, Status Earlier, in December, the board […]