As this hurricane season heats up, you may want to read this article in the Texas Tribune about the Ike Dike or Texas Coastal Barrier. It’s a story about a flood mitigation effort that started in 2008, shortly after Hurricane Ike. I remember this storm vividly. I photographed the damage on the Bolivar Peninsula days […]
Montgomery County commissioners will consider changing flood mitigation requirements for new developments at their regular August 27 meeting. Commissioners will hear public testimony and consider approving a revision to the Montgomery County Drainage Criteria Manual. The change would close a loophole that allows developers to substitute “flood routing studies” for detention ponds in new Montgomery […]
The 86th Texas Legislature charged the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) with implementing flood-related legislation, including Senate Bill (SB) 7, SB 8, SB 500, and House Joint Resolution 4. This legislation greatly expanded the TWDB’s role in flood planning and financing. Planning the New State Flood Plan The TWDB will administer a new state flood […]
I recently had the honor of interviewing Blake Roberts, general manager of the Clubs of Kingwood. Roberts took the job just five days before Hurricane Harvey and has led the Clubs’ remarkable comeback. From golf courses buried under as much as eight feet of sand to the clubhouse that took on six feet of water, […]
Before Harvey, Jennifer Parks lived in the Forest Cove Townhomes with her husband, four kids and cat. They absolutely loved the river lifestyle and the friendships they built with neighbors. Harvey was the eighth of seven floods in five years. It destroyed their 4-story townhome, a close knit community and a life they loved despite […]
Instead of exploring one topic in depth, tonight, I’ll summarize a number of topics related to flood mitigation with just a few sentences on each. West Fork Mouth Bar Dredging Mouth bar dredging is going faster than expected. Great Lakes Dredge and Dock has not encountered buried trees in that region of the river as […]
Aeschylus, the ancient Greek playwright coined the phrase, “The first casualty in war is truth.” The same is true of water wars. In an attempt to justify unlimited groundwater pumping from the Jasper aquifer, a headline in a Montgomery County online newspaper trumpeted, “University Of Houston Study Shows No Linkage Between Deep Groundwater Production And […]
Judge Lauren Reeder of the 234th Judicial District Court has set the trial date in the Elm Grove/North Kingwood Forest flooding case for July 13, 2020. Background of Case On May 7th of this year, heavy rains fell on 268 acres that had been clear cut by subsidiaries of Perry Homes (PSWA, Inc. and Figure […]
A CBS 60-Minutes segment last Sunday brought into focus many thoughts I have been struggling to articulate since Hurricane Harvey. The segment featured an interview with a Dutch flood expert named Henk Ovink. Mr. Ovink has some impressive credentials and consults with other countries and cities around the world. At a strategic level, he looks […]
Two new subdivisions, Northpark Woods and Woodridge Village, made me worry about the impact of upstream development on Kingwood and the rest of the Lake Houston area. Could these developments overwhelm the capacity of our drainage ditches? Could they increase our chances of flooding? The consensus among flood professionals: It’s not likely. But they also […]