The 2023 legislature scorecard, just five years after Hurricane Harvey, shows that flooding is fast becoming forgotten in Texas. Of the seven issues I tracked, the Lake Houston Area had two wins, four losses, and one that could be ruled a coin toss depending on your point of view. In the Win Column Let’s look […]
At the end of June, stormwater detention basin excavation on Harris County Flood Control District’s (HCFCD) Woodridge Village property reached 92% of Atlas-14 requirements. When HCFCD bought the property from Perry Homes in 2021, it had only 70% of the required detention capacity under Atlas 14. Atlas-14 defines the current standard for safely containing a […]
Go to almost any news source you can name and you will likely find an article about climate change. They generally manage to turn a local event into an international crisis. The articles report on the latest freeze, heat wave, drought or flood somewhere in the world and tie that into similar stories affecting other […]
On 6/28/23, civic leaders from all levels of government gathered to celebrate the acquisition of enough funding to finally begin renovating Poor-Farm Ditch. Poor-Farm Ditch runs from Greenway Plaza on the north to Brays Bayou on the south between West University Place and South Side Place. Harris County Flood Control District started studying ditch improvements […]
First Street Foundation, a non-profit risk-research group, estimates (based on what it says are “well known” Atlas-14 flaws) that a so-called 100-year flood event in Houston could likely happen every 8 to 23 years. NOAA’s Atlas 14, a massive, years-long effort, which hasn’t even been fully implemented yet, may already be seriously out of date […]
While speaking to a public meeting of the Harris County Community Flood Resilience Task Force, Scott Elmer, the Flood Control District’s new Chief Partnership and Programs Officer, predicted that some projects in the 2018 flood bond likely will not get done because of a funding gap. Elmer made this remark while discussing a list of […]
Harris County’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management has produced an excellent presentation designed to help you get ready for emergencies of almost any type. While it primarily focuses on hurricanes, it also covers other natural and man-made disasters such as tornadoes, train derailments, plant explosions, and more. Complexity Complicates Times of Chaos Some […]
Two pieces of good news came out of the Texas General Land Office (GLO) in two days! Yesterday, the GLO announced that both Houston and Harris County met their respective expenditure goals for Harvey disaster-relief funds. Today, Commissioner Dawn Buckingham M.D. announced the approval of more than another $128 million worth of flood-mitigation projects in […]
The Texas General Land Office (GLO) announced today that for the first time ever since Hurricane Harvey, both Houston and Harris County have each met their benchmarks for expending disaster relief funds – in the SAME time period. They may have individually met performance benchmarks before, but never together in the same review period. Both […]
Third in a Series on the City of Houston Planning Commission’s Livable Places Initiative In the first two posts in this series, I discussed how the Houston Planning Commission’s Livable Places Initiative had the potential to: Despite well intentioned efforts to help limit the growth of impervious cover, the Commission has not conducted a flood […]