Erosion can sometimes be sudden. It’s not always a slow process of water grinding away at dirt and dissolving it, or wearing down rocks. This post will examine several examples around us and look at their implications. I intend it as a continuation of yesterday’s post about ditch maintenance. There are four main types of […]
Harris County Flood Control District has quietly started repairs to two more Kingwood Drainage Ditches. The first is G103-33-01, the ditch between Fosters Mill and Kings Point that enters the river near the mouth bar at Scenic Shores. The second is the Kingwood Diversion Ditch, G-103-38-00. It runs down the west side of Woodland Hills, […]
Thursday evening, I posted about a drainage ditch on the western edge of Woodridge Village in Montgomery County that Perry contractors had partially blocked off. Last year, residents of Adams Oaks, a Porter subdivision that borders Woodridge Village, say that alterations to that same drainage ditch contributed to flooding dozens of homes twice. Recently, the […]
Aerial photos taken on 5/11/2020 show wastewater on neighboring properties outside the Triple PG mine in Porter are higher than in the mine’s settling pond. If heavy rains materialize this weekend as predicted, that wastewater could be flushed downstream into the drinking water for 2 million people. Mine Has History of Dumping and Pumping Earlier […]
Aerial photos taken Monday this week (5/11/2020) show that Perry Homes’ contractors appear to be partially blocking drainage that serves dozens of homes on the western side of Woodridge Village in Porter. With heavy rain expected this weekend, residents like Gretchen Dunlap Smith are nervous. Homes Flooded Twice Last Year by Water that Could Not […]
Houston After Harvey: Stories from Inside the Hurricane is an encyclopedic, almost kaleidoscopic collection of interviews with flood victims about their Hurricane Harvey experiences. The new Amazon eBook by two Houston authors, Jacqueline Havelka and Jill Bullard Almaguer, has a “you are there” quality to it. The interviews fall into roughly three categories: before, during and […]
On April 21st, 2020, I reported on a sand mine that was river mining in the San Jacinto West Fork without a permit. It’s unlikely that any penalties will result. In fact, three weeks later, neither the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), nor Texas Parks and Wildlife Division (TPWD), have even investigated the incident. […]
On top of normal disaster preparation advice, FEMA and the CDC have released special instructions this year for hurricane preparation during the COVID pandemic. First, Cover All the Basics Most of the basic advice remains the same. For instance: Write down emergency phone numbers and keep them on the refrigerator or near every phone in […]
Last year, overland sheet flow from Perry Homes’ Woodridge Village contributed to flooding hundreds of homes in Elm Grove and North Kingwood Forest twice. Construction slowed last fall, but has now turned into a beehive of activity. Just days before a deadline for a deal with the Harris County and the City of Houston to […]
More than a decade after one San Jacinto West Fork sand mine stopped mining, the abandoned mine is still: Inundated by floods Leaking silty water into the river from multiple locations Littered with mining debris Unrestored. That Was The Good News Worse, it has little hope of ever being restored. The West Fork has captured one of the […]