4/24/25 – My weird nephew Izzy called again this morning. He was all atwitter about Harris County’s new Climate-Justice Plan adopted by Commissioner’s Court on 4/10/25. And he could barely contain his excitement.
The Phone Call from Nephew Izzy
“They did it, Uncle Bob. They really, finally done did it?”
“Did what, Izzy?”
“We finally gonna get some climate justice, Uncle Bob.”
“I didn’t know climate broke the law, Izzy.”
“Oh, Uncle Bob! Justice is just a word they tag onto things they want.”
“What do they want, Izzy?”
“For starters, Uncle Bob, a carbon tax.”
“But Izzy, you can barely afford to put gas in that 1974 Lincoln of yours as it is.”
“I hadn’t thought of that, Uncle Bob. Maybe they’ll buy me a new ride. It’s getting hard to find parts for the Lincoln nowadays. Junkyards hardly carry dem anymore.”
“What else does the climate-justice plan do, Izzy?”
“They gonna make it so you can check out gardening tools at libraries.”
“That would mean you have to work, Izzy.”
“But think of all the things I could grow, Uncle Bob.”
“Cheetos don’t grow in gardens, Izzy.”
“They don’t?”
“They don’t.”
Brightening… “Well, they gonna make solar panels easier to get, Uncle Bob!”
“Where will you put them, Izzy? You live in an apartment.”
“Well, I could stick one in my window…”
“And do what with it?”
“Hook it up to my deep frier.”
“You got me there, Izzy. I’m all for sustainable fried chicken.”
Hair Gone Wild
“You know the beauty of climate justice, Uncle Bob?”
“No.”
“You can plug just about anything into it.”
“I can see that, Izzy.”
“Yeah, Lina Hidalgo might finally get some hair justice.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know how her hair always be shootin’ out all over the place from Houston’s humidity?”
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo voted for the new Climate Justice Plan.
“Hmmmm, yesssss?”
“I look that way, too, sometimes when I wake up. I sure could use some hair justice myself.”
“Personally, Izzy. I’d settle for some good, old-fashioned criminal justice. You know…keep the thieves, murderers and rapists in jail…that kind of stuff.”
“Geez, Uncle Bob. You’re so old fashioned. That went out with the Nineties.”
“Look, Izzy. Is climate justice going to make you safer from hurricanes?”
“I heard they might spend some of the extra tax money to fix flooding, Uncle Bob.”
“Where? Behind Rodney Ellis’ house?”
“Who’s Rodney Ellis, Uncle Bob?”
“He’s the guy trying to take your tax dollars, Izzy.”
“I can’t afford no more deductions from my pay check, Uncle Bob. I barely got change left over for them cheesy fries at Burger King.”
“Case closed, Izzy.”
Posted by Bob Rehak on 4/24/25
2795 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/20230524-Hicaldo-Hair.jpg?fit=1200%2C797&ssl=17971200adminadmin2025-04-24 15:30:582025-04-26 09:30:13County’s Climate-Justice Plan Gets Weird Nephew Izzy All Excited
4/23/25 – At a Town Hall meeting on 4/14/25, Montgomery County Precinct 3 Commissioner Ritch Wheeler implied that Harris County had “approved” a proposed 5,500 acre Ryko floodplain development in MoCo. It did not.
Wheeler, who is newly elected, likely misunderstood the nuances of reports and the outcome of meetings his predecessor held.
Documents Clear Up Misunderstanding
Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) and Harris County Engineering did meet with the developer. They reviewed the developer’s preliminary drainage impact analysis when James Noack was the MoCo Precinct 3 Commissioner.
But Harris County did not approve anything in Montgomery County. That includes the development. They didn’t even review a complete drainage impact analysis.
Harris County only issued a “Letter of No Objection” to a portion of a preliminary study that concerned a bridge across Spring Creek.
Moreover, the letter and other associated documents made it clear that “not objecting” was conditional.
Engineers clearly labelled the Drainage Impact Analysis as “Preliminary.” HCFCD requested many supporting documents before it could make a final determination. Those requests included a geotechnical report (soil survey), site plans and a U.S. Army Corps permit (to name just three).
Such pre-development meetings help engineers, developers and regulators scope out the concerns of each other at an early stage before they invest thousands of hours in a project.
What Wheeler Said
Wheeler implied that Harris County had approved Ryko’s drainage impact analysis. And he implied that the approval covered the whole development which lies entirely in Montgomery County.
The purpose of Wheeler’s Town Hall Meeting was to talk about Montgomery County’s 2025 road bond and the Townsen Blvd. project within it, that ran through Ryko’s proposed development.
At one point, Wheeler said, “I don’t want to get too far in the weeds on the water portion of it (meaning flooding). … But I will tell you, they (Ryko) did submit a drainage impact analysis to the county. They also submitted it to Harris County. Harris County has already approved it.“
That didn’t sound right. So, I checked.
What Harris County Said
The highly technical, preliminary drainage analysis covered both the development and a bridge into Harris County. That may have added to Wheeler’s confusion.
Harris County says that it does NOT approve development plans in other counties.
Harris County DID issue a “Letter of No Objection” to the Harris County portion of the proposed bridge over Spring Creek.
Harris County Engineering and HCFCD provided four documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. They show definitively what Harris Country regulators saw when and how they responded. They include:
A 2/27/23 conference report of a “pre-project” meeting between Ryko, its engineers, and the regulators. HCFCD communicated its concerns about the Harris County portion of the bridge project, potential downstream impacts, and hydrology models to be used in the final drainage impact analysis.
The draft of a 10/25/24 letter from Chris Bennett of Harris County Flood Control to Daryl Hahn, Harris County Engineering’s Director of Permits. The letter clearly states, “HCFCD review is limited to the proposed Spring Creek Bridge only.” It also clearly stated that additional permits, plans and studies were needed.
A 4/17/25 email from Emily Woodell, HCFCD Chief External Affairs Officer. She stated, “Our organization does not conduct development reviews for compliance with the requirements of other agencies or jurisdictions. In this case, … it appears the only element reviewed by the Flood Control District was an analysis related to the proposed bridge crossing.” Woodell further stated that “to date” Ryko had never submitted any plans for the development itself to HCFCD for review.
Ryko property outlined in red. Floodways and floodplains in shades of blue.From preliminary drainage impact study.
HCFCD’s letter also made it clear that they had not checked all of the 272 pages in the drainage impact analysis. At that point, they were simply taking the word of licensed professional engineers hired by the developer.
No Response Yet from Montgomery County Engineering
I also submitted a FOIA request to Montgomery County Engineering for their copies of the developer’s construction plans and a more recent drainage impact analysis. To date, they have not responded.
Hilarious Mistake in Drainage Impact Analysis
The preliminary drainage impact study submitted by Woolpert Engineering on behalf of Ryko contains a hilarious mistake in the second sentence of the Executive Summary. The engineers say the development lies east of 59; it’s west.
To me, that calls for third-party engineers to dive deeper into the drainage impact study. No telling what else they might find.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 4/23/25
2794 Days Since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/20250423-Ryko-DIA-Floodplains-.jpg?fit=1100%2C704&ssl=17041100adminadmin2025-04-23 17:55:082025-04-25 14:47:55Harris County Did NOT Approve Ryko Development
4/22/25 – HCFCD has added Microsoft Power BI capabilities to its website. They let users interactively explore and visualize HCFCD spending by watershed. Data goes back to the start of the 2018 Flood Bond. Users can even sort spending data by:
Source of funds (Bond, district taxes, or partners)
Bond Project ID
Calendar year and quarter
Watershed
Project group
Funding source
Project stage
Type of activity
See below.
Total HCFCD spending by watershed between start of flood bond and end of Q1 2025
Using those “filters” on the left-hand side of the page instantly reconfigures two charts:
Watersheds in a bar graph, rank ordered by selected filters (shown above)
Incremental and cumulative spending over time using selected filter(s) (shown below).
The BI in Power BI stands for Business Intelligence. It’s an extremely powerful and fast way to explore massive data sets online.
By “right clicking” on a selection on a PC (or “control clicking” on a Mac), users can pull up tabular breakdowns of the data with exact amounts using any variables they select. From there, they can drill up or down in the data.
Analysis that used to take weeks can now be done in seconds.
Bob Rehak
Thank you Microsoft and thank you HCFCD.
Differences Between New and Previous Visualizations
There is one huge difference between the reports I have been compiling from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and the Microsoft Power BI information. I tracked HCFCD spending from Hurricane Harvey starting in the fourth quarter of 2017. The Power BI data starts after voters approved the flood bond a year AFTER Harvey.
Instead of making FOIA requests each quarter, I plan to use this data from now on. There’s a little less of it. But the improvement in convenience will make analysis much faster.
What Latest Data Shows
Several things jump out at you when you first come to the new HCFCD spending page. Since Q3 2018:
HCFCD has spent more than twice as much on County-Wide Projects (which include subdivision drainage projects) as it has on any single watershed.
More than half of all spending has gone to County-Wide Projects and four watersheds: Cypress Creek, Brays Bayou, White Oak Bayou and Greens Bayou.
The overall spending rate is now 39% of what it was at the peak of activity in 2020. Compare the next two screen captures.
Spending for 2020 by project phase.Spending through Q1 2025 by project phase.
Note: the graphs above make the spending drop look even sharper than it is. Remember the second graph shows only one quarter of spending for 2025 versus whole-year spending for other years.
To calculate 39%, I annualized Q1 2025 spending. 2024, the last full year of spending, is down 54% compared to 2020.
Drilling down a little bit in the data, I also learned that, to date, the San Jacinto watershed (the County’s largest) has had only $18 million invested in construction of flood-mitigation improvements. That’s less than a fifth of what the top four dollar getters have received.
When looking at construction spending only, the entire San Jacinto Watershed has received only $18 million out of $900 million spent by HCFCD since Harvey.
That’s less than 2% of the spending that actually reduces flooding. Other investments in the watershed have primarily been studies that talk about plans for improvements without really making them.
Where to Find Power BI Graphs, Tables
The Microsoft Power BI tables are buried on the HCFCD site. To see them, you click on:
The Activity Page, which contains only one sentence of copy.
I asked HCFCD why the page is buried. They responded that the page has only been up for about a month and that they are still making some usability tweaks before advertising it widely.
Below are some other things I would do to improve the user experience.
Wish List
While much more user friendly than an Excel spreadsheet, the HCFCD’s Power BI page could benefit from some instructions. For instance, there are no instructions on how to find the underlying data (right- or control-clicking).
Q1 2025 data revealed by control-clicking on the Q1 2025 line in the second Incremental Spending graph above.
And through experimentation, I learned that “command clicking” on a Mac lets you select multiple variables in a filter, i.e., multiple watersheds, years, etc.
HCFCD used to be able to sort this data by precinct.
They also have information about the low-to-moderate income populations in each watershed and the amount of damage per watershed in various storms. But that sorting option isn’t available either.
A cross-link to project descriptions so that users can easily select projects of interest to them would also help. Right now, they’re asked to choose from a long list of numbers that are meaningless to most people. I had to open the project list archived on ReduceFlooding to identify what was what. It sure would be helpful to include that data, too.
Making data readily available has a way of anchoring political debates in reality. And that, in my humble opinion, is a valuable thing. It creates a data-driven culture that brings people together rather than having them argue over rumors.
County’s Climate-Justice Plan Gets Weird Nephew Izzy All Excited
4/24/25 – My weird nephew Izzy called again this morning. He was all atwitter about Harris County’s new Climate-Justice Plan adopted by Commissioner’s Court on 4/10/25. And he could barely contain his excitement.
The Phone Call from Nephew Izzy
“They did it, Uncle Bob. They really, finally done did it?”
“Did what, Izzy?”
“We finally gonna get some climate justice, Uncle Bob.”
“I didn’t know climate broke the law, Izzy.”
“Oh, Uncle Bob! Justice is just a word they tag onto things they want.”
“What do they want, Izzy?”
“For starters, Uncle Bob, a carbon tax.”
“But Izzy, you can barely afford to put gas in that 1974 Lincoln of yours as it is.”
“I hadn’t thought of that, Uncle Bob. Maybe they’ll buy me a new ride. It’s getting hard to find parts for the Lincoln nowadays. Junkyards hardly carry dem anymore.”
“What else does the climate-justice plan do, Izzy?”
“They gonna make it so you can check out gardening tools at libraries.”
“That would mean you have to work, Izzy.”
“But think of all the things I could grow, Uncle Bob.”
“Cheetos don’t grow in gardens, Izzy.”
“They don’t?”
“They don’t.”
Brightening… “Well, they gonna make solar panels easier to get, Uncle Bob!”
“Where will you put them, Izzy? You live in an apartment.”
“Well, I could stick one in my window…”
“And do what with it?”
“Hook it up to my deep frier.”
“You got me there, Izzy. I’m all for sustainable fried chicken.”
Hair Gone Wild
“You know the beauty of climate justice, Uncle Bob?”
“No.”
“You can plug just about anything into it.”
“I can see that, Izzy.”
“Yeah, Lina Hidalgo might finally get some hair justice.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know how her hair always be shootin’ out all over the place from Houston’s humidity?”
“Hmmmm, yesssss?”
“I look that way, too, sometimes when I wake up. I sure could use some hair justice myself.”
“Personally, Izzy. I’d settle for some good, old-fashioned criminal justice. You know…keep the thieves, murderers and rapists in jail…that kind of stuff.”
“Geez, Uncle Bob. You’re so old fashioned. That went out with the Nineties.”
“Look, Izzy. Is climate justice going to make you safer from hurricanes?”
“I heard they might spend some of the extra tax money to fix flooding, Uncle Bob.”
“Where? Behind Rodney Ellis’ house?”
“Who’s Rodney Ellis, Uncle Bob?”
“He’s the guy trying to take your tax dollars, Izzy.”
“I can’t afford no more deductions from my pay check, Uncle Bob. I barely got change left over for them cheesy fries at Burger King.”
“Case closed, Izzy.”
Posted by Bob Rehak on 4/24/25
2795 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Harris County Did NOT Approve Ryko Development
4/23/25 – At a Town Hall meeting on 4/14/25, Montgomery County Precinct 3 Commissioner Ritch Wheeler implied that Harris County had “approved” a proposed 5,500 acre Ryko floodplain development in MoCo. It did not.
Wheeler, who is newly elected, likely misunderstood the nuances of reports and the outcome of meetings his predecessor held.
Documents Clear Up Misunderstanding
Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) and Harris County Engineering did meet with the developer. They reviewed the developer’s preliminary drainage impact analysis when James Noack was the MoCo Precinct 3 Commissioner.
But Harris County did not approve anything in Montgomery County. That includes the development. They didn’t even review a complete drainage impact analysis.
Moreover, the letter and other associated documents made it clear that “not objecting” was conditional.
Engineers clearly labelled the Drainage Impact Analysis as “Preliminary.” HCFCD requested many supporting documents before it could make a final determination. Those requests included a geotechnical report (soil survey), site plans and a U.S. Army Corps permit (to name just three).
Such pre-development meetings help engineers, developers and regulators scope out the concerns of each other at an early stage before they invest thousands of hours in a project.
What Wheeler Said
Wheeler implied that Harris County had approved Ryko’s drainage impact analysis. And he implied that the approval covered the whole development which lies entirely in Montgomery County.
The purpose of Wheeler’s Town Hall Meeting was to talk about Montgomery County’s 2025 road bond and the Townsen Blvd. project within it, that ran through Ryko’s proposed development.
At one point, Wheeler said, “I don’t want to get too far in the weeds on the water portion of it (meaning flooding). … But I will tell you, they (Ryko) did submit a drainage impact analysis to the county. They also submitted it to Harris County. Harris County has already approved it.“
That didn’t sound right. So, I checked.
What Harris County Said
The highly technical, preliminary drainage analysis covered both the development and a bridge into Harris County. That may have added to Wheeler’s confusion.
Harris County says that it does NOT approve development plans in other counties.
Harris County DID issue a “Letter of No Objection” to the Harris County portion of the proposed bridge over Spring Creek.
Harris County Engineering and HCFCD provided four documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. They show definitively what Harris Country regulators saw when and how they responded. They include:
HCFCD’s letter also made it clear that they had not checked all of the 272 pages in the drainage impact analysis. At that point, they were simply taking the word of licensed professional engineers hired by the developer.
No Response Yet from Montgomery County Engineering
I also submitted a FOIA request to Montgomery County Engineering for their copies of the developer’s construction plans and a more recent drainage impact analysis. To date, they have not responded.
Hilarious Mistake in Drainage Impact Analysis
The preliminary drainage impact study submitted by Woolpert Engineering on behalf of Ryko contains a hilarious mistake in the second sentence of the Executive Summary. The engineers say the development lies east of 59; it’s west.
To me, that calls for third-party engineers to dive deeper into the drainage impact study. No telling what else they might find.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 4/23/25
2794 Days Since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
New Web Page Helps Users Explore HCFCD Spending Trends
4/22/25 – HCFCD has added Microsoft Power BI capabilities to its website. They let users interactively explore and visualize HCFCD spending by watershed. Data goes back to the start of the 2018 Flood Bond. Users can even sort spending data by:
See below.
Using those “filters” on the left-hand side of the page instantly reconfigures two charts:
The BI in Power BI stands for Business Intelligence. It’s an extremely powerful and fast way to explore massive data sets online.
By “right clicking” on a selection on a PC (or “control clicking” on a Mac), users can pull up tabular breakdowns of the data with exact amounts using any variables they select. From there, they can drill up or down in the data.
Thank you Microsoft and thank you HCFCD.
Differences Between New and Previous Visualizations
There is one huge difference between the reports I have been compiling from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and the Microsoft Power BI information. I tracked HCFCD spending from Hurricane Harvey starting in the fourth quarter of 2017. The Power BI data starts after voters approved the flood bond a year AFTER Harvey.
Instead of making FOIA requests each quarter, I plan to use this data from now on. There’s a little less of it. But the improvement in convenience will make analysis much faster.
What Latest Data Shows
Several things jump out at you when you first come to the new HCFCD spending page. Since Q3 2018:
Note: the graphs above make the spending drop look even sharper than it is. Remember the second graph shows only one quarter of spending for 2025 versus whole-year spending for other years.
To calculate 39%, I annualized Q1 2025 spending. 2024, the last full year of spending, is down 54% compared to 2020.
Drilling down a little bit in the data, I also learned that, to date, the San Jacinto watershed (the County’s largest) has had only $18 million invested in construction of flood-mitigation improvements. That’s less than a fifth of what the top four dollar getters have received.
That’s less than 2% of the spending that actually reduces flooding. Other investments in the watershed have primarily been studies that talk about plans for improvements without really making them.
Where to Find Power BI Graphs, Tables
The Microsoft Power BI tables are buried on the HCFCD site. To see them, you click on:
I asked HCFCD why the page is buried. They responded that the page has only been up for about a month and that they are still making some usability tweaks before advertising it widely.
Below are some other things I would do to improve the user experience.
Wish List
While much more user friendly than an Excel spreadsheet, the HCFCD’s Power BI page could benefit from some instructions. For instance, there are no instructions on how to find the underlying data (right- or control-clicking).
And through experimentation, I learned that “command clicking” on a Mac lets you select multiple variables in a filter, i.e., multiple watersheds, years, etc.
HCFCD used to be able to sort this data by precinct.
They also have information about the low-to-moderate income populations in each watershed and the amount of damage per watershed in various storms. But that sorting option isn’t available either.
A cross-link to project descriptions so that users can easily select projects of interest to them would also help. Right now, they’re asked to choose from a long list of numbers that are meaningless to most people. I had to open the project list archived on ReduceFlooding to identify what was what. It sure would be helpful to include that data, too.
Making data readily available has a way of anchoring political debates in reality. And that, in my humble opinion, is a valuable thing. It creates a data-driven culture that brings people together rather than having them argue over rumors.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 4/22/25
2793 Days since Hurricane Harvey