3/3/25 – A Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) spokesperson reports that the District finished picking up Hurricane Beryl debris at numerous locations along Bens Branch in Kingwood on February 27, 2025. Hurricane Beryl struck the Houston area on July 8, 2024, with winds gusting up to 83 MPH at Bush Intercontinental Airport. Sustained winds […]
3/1/25 – At the 2/27/25 Harris County Special Commissioners Court meeting, commissioners spent more than an hour discussing the need for a 2018 Flood-Bond update to help deal with a potential billion-dollar funding shortfall. Previous Flood Control District department heads published a flood-bond update monthly. But the frequency has fallen to annually under the current […]
3/1/25 – More than 60 flood-mitigation and disaster-relief projects identified after Hurricane Harvey have yet to begin. We won World War II in half that time. Between Pearl Harbor and the surrender of Japan, 1349 days elapsed. But more than twice that number of days have elapsed since Hurricane Harvey in 2017. At 1349 Days […]
2/28/25 – Today, the Texas General Land Office (GLO) released the status of Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) disaster-relief and flood-mitigation applications from Harris County’s Flood Control District and Housing & Community Development Department. The grant applications cover almost $1.1 billion dollars in aid for Harris County relating to Hurricane Harvey alone, which the GLO […]
2/27/25 – Hallett Materials has finally plugged a year-long leak in its Porter sand mine on the San Jacinto West Fork. According to residents who live near the leak, an investigator from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) visited the mine yesterday. For more than six hours, he sampled water leaking from the mine. […]
2/26/25 – One week from today, Northpark Drive will close for three days – from March 5-7. UnionPacific Railroad (UPRR) will maneuver a two-hundred-foot section of track and ties – welded and bolted into a single, massive unit – into place across what will become ten lanes of traffic and two sidewalks. Section Already Assembled, […]
2/25/25 – Today, Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) began picking up remaining Hurricane Beryl Debris from Bens Branch in Kingwood. The cleanup effort began on Tree Lane across from Bear Branch Elementary. More than 600 children in grades K-5 attend school there. The delayed cleanup effort illustrates the need for community leaders and Flood […]
2/24/25 – Yesterday, I posted pictures and video of a river of muck hundreds of feet wide that has poured out of Hallett Materials 170-acre settling pond into the San Jacinto West Fork…for a full year. Today, I’ll talk about the high cost of living downstream from that situation. But Hallett has even more environmental […]
2/23/2025 – The mammoth Hallett Sand Mine has been leaking continuously into the San Jacinto West Fork for a year, according to neighbors. I first reported this particular leak on February 9, 2024. But it’s only one of several problems at the same mine. And the cost of dredging downstream from it is now approaching […]
2/21/25 – The UnionPacific Railroad (UPRR) has started preparing rails that it will place in one 200-foot long section across 10 lanes of Northpark Drive traffic. The closure of Northpark for the installation is still scheduled for March 5-7. UPRR is prepping the rails in the old northbound lanes of Loop 494 immediately north of […]