9/5/2026 – Yesterday, the administration proposed a new interpretation for “waters of the U.S.” (WOTUS) that could strip almost all wetlands of federal protection. Wetlands help control flooding, filter runoff, break down harmful pollutants, and provide habitat for a large share of threatened and endangered species.
Proud new parents. Two great egrets watch as the first chick from a new clutch of eggs hatches out.Photographed in wetlands near High Island, Texas.
According to PBS, the EPA and Army Corps will accept public comments for 30 days once the new plan is published in the Federal Register, expected in the next week.
Recent Attempts to Develop Clear Definition
The new rule supposedly will provide clarity to a landscape characterized by many shades of green. It hopes to strike a balance between property rights and pollution while cutting red tape and regulatory uncertainty.
The New York Times wrote that the new rule could strip federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands. It “would significantly narrow the definition of “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, that are protected from harmful pollution under the Clean Water Act of 1972.” The new version is more sweeping than an initial proposal released in November 2025.
The effort to redefine the rule began with a Supreme Court ruling in Sackett v. EPA back in 2023. The majority of the Court wrote that the Clean Water Act of 1977 allowed the agency to regulate only “relatively permanent” bodies of water and wetlands connected to them.
However, the Court’s opinion did not define “relatively permanent.” The NY Times article says, “In the proposal released in November, the Trump administration defined a ‘relatively permanent’ body of water as one that flowed either every day or during the ‘wet season.’ The new proposal would define it instead as one that flowed every day except for temporary interruptions like droughts lasting less than 30 days.”
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) believes the change could strip federal protection from 94 percent of the nation’s wetlands, up from 81 percent under the November 2025 proposal.
The National Wildlife Federation believes “the new plan could end protections for at least one-third of the more than 3.5 million miles of streams in the United States,” said the Times, quoting Jim Murphy, associate VP of Legal Advocacy.
But the American Farm Bureau believes it would end regulatory headaches for farmers and ranchers for unknowingly violating the law.
Provisions in Current Regulation
The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service writes that under current law, “It is illegal to drain or fill a wetland without a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The entire Texas coast is under the jurisdiction of the Corps’ Galveston District Office.”
“Before a permit can be granted, the requestor must show that the project has considered all viable alternatives and minimized impacts as much as possible. Any wetland loss must be compensated for by constructing new wetlands or by restoring or enhancing existing wetlands,” says A&M.
How Would Change in Definition Affect Lake Houston Area
It’s too early to tell exactly how a change in definition for WOTUS would affect the Lake Houston Area. We certainly have many wetlands near bodies of water that flow year round. But what does “connected” mean? Does it apply only to a swamp at a river’s edge? Or does it also include ponds in floodplains a hundred yards from a river?
This is not an academic abstraction; it lowers the bar for developers. And that could make it easier to build in floodplains, which could endanger lives and property…and increase the federal deficit.
Flooding likely costs the federal government roughly $15 billion to $25 billion a year on average in disaster relief, recovery and related expenditures, with costs soaring much higher after catastrophic storms. Because those expenditures generally aren’t offset by additional revenues or spending reductions, they effectively increase federal deficits. And that number could go even higher if you include pre-disaster flood-mitigation spending (as opposed to pure disaster relief).
The Scarborough Example
Scarborough, for instance, wants to build thousands of homes on 5300 acres in one of the most flood-prone areas in the Houston region…at the confluence of the San Jacinto West Fork with Spring, Cypress and Turkey Creeks.
Scarborough Area in center from FEMA’s Flood Hazard Layer Viewer
Hydrologists say that it would be like “aiming a fire hose at the Humble/Kingwood area.” The City of Houston and Harris County have unanimously condemned the proposed development. And almost 10,000 concerned citizens in Montgomery and Harris Counties have signed a petition against it.
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/2025/06/Slide3.jpeg?fit=1100%2C825&ssl=18251100adminadmin2026-09-05 16:26:292026-09-05 16:31:27Proposed New Rule Could Mean More Wetlands Lose Protection
9/4/2026 – In what appears to be a victory for plaintiffs in the Addicks-Barker Upstream litigation, McGehee ☆ Chang, Feiler announced today that the government has decided not to appeal to the United States Supreme Court.
“In that case, the appellate process would be over.”
McGehee ☆ Chang, Feiler
Next Step: Determining Compensation for Victims
With that, the case will proceed to the final stage – determining the amount of compensation to each of the property owners in the Upstream area.
Addicks and Barker are the huge green areas on the west side of Houston.Stormwater flows left to right.
The government advised that it will be working with the law firm’s upstream team to determine and streamline an agreeable process. “The Upstream team and the government have been mediating throughout the earlier part of this year, and we are confident that a mutually agreeable method can be worked out,” said the McGehee team.
Judge Hertling previously stated and reiterated that he wants to move forward quickly and give compensation to the property owners.
Compensation Conference Coming in October
The judge will reportedly return to Houston in October and host another conference.
McGehee stated, “We are very encouraged by this development and will provide more updates as the final stage of the case progresses.”
Only three weeks ago, the government sought an extension while it considered whether to appeal to the Supreme Court. But the time for that extension ran out today.
History of Case
The Upstream and Downstream cases were split into separate groups because the cases differed fundamentally. The downstream homeowners flooded due to floodgate operation. The upstream homeowners flooded because homes were built inside the reservoirs.
The initial trial phase of the upstream case drew to a close in the second half of 2022. The judge ruled the government was liable for damages. But the government appealed on December 29, 2022. Three years later, on December 29, 2025, the Court of Appeals, after 13 months of deliberations, affirmed the trial court’s ruling on the issue of liability. It agreed that the government is liable for taking of the Upstream homeowners’ property.
The homeowners contended that when the reservoirs were built, the Corps didn’t buy enough property within them. Private developers then built homes within the reservoirs. The government warned as early as 1973 that it knew of the problem and that homes could be flooded.
Flooded Homes in Addicks Reservoir during Harvey
Posted by Bob Rehak on 9/4/2026
3294 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/20250410-AddicksBarker-Location.jpg?fit=1100%2C526&ssl=15261100adminadmin2026-09-04 14:17:342026-09-04 14:18:52Government Decides NOT to appeal Addicks-Barker Upstream Case to Supreme Court
9/3/26 – This guest post about “Hurricane Harvey Remembered” is by Kathleen Todd Jordan. Ms. Jordan grew up in Kingwood and has lived here for almost 50 years. She met the man who would later become her husband while they were both enrolled at Kingwood Middle School. So, Jordan has deep ties to the community and its residents. During Hurricane Harvey, two of her neighbors died. Many others had their homes destroyed. On the ninth anniversary of the flood, she wrote a deeply moving memoir of the event and recovery from it. Jordan is also a newly appointed board member of the Lake Houston Dredging and Maintenance District. She gave me permission to reprint her story below.
Neighbors Helping Neighbors
Pics below show our dear family-friend’s home. The living room looked as though a whirlpool picked up all of the furniture and swirled it around. Rushing water and debris had pulverized the thick, picture windows.
The power of water moving through a living room
Seeing people’s lives through their material objects piled high to the sky … it was just heartbreaking.
For weeks after Harvey, debris piles lined both sides of streets in Kingwood.
Harvey Remembered: Antibiotics, Amputation, Death and Anger
Now, this is where I have ZERO tolerance for the back talk from government entities – speech emanating mainly from Montgomery County (MoCo). When people from Kingwood hear some MoCo folks saying that we are just belly aching and no one died and “we flooded, too”…I say “Don’t go there.”
After the storm, we opened our home to a friend, who otherwise would have been packed off to the George R. Brown. We helped her muck out her home and her neighbor’s. Two doors down from where she lived, we mucked out a young man’s home with the help of his mother. She slipped and fell in the mud in his kitchen.
She cut her arm when she fell. The son asked if anyone had a first aid kit. I ran home to grab what I could. A couple of days later, we heard the mother was in the hospital with an infection.
That infection turned into MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), a type of staph bacteria that is resistant to many common antibiotics. In a last ditch effort to save her life, the medical team decided to start AMPUTATING BODY PARTS. Think about this MoCo, City of Houston, GLO, Harris County. She still died.
Just two blocks away, a husband attempted to start his portable generator. He dropped dead from a heart attack. Two deaths within two blocks. Two lives extinguished. Arguably, the loss of life could have been avoided. More such avoidable tragedies happened beyond the immediate area where I was working.
What Montgomery County Needs to Understand
Everyone reading this outside of Kingwood needs to understand these memories and heartaches go far beyond the material losses that have changed each of us.
When we hear the uninformed – especially those from MoCo – say things like, “No one died,” “lowering the lake does not work,” “we want to use our boats,” almost 80,000 people here beg to differ in no uncertain terms.
Did you know that almost 50% of all deaths from Harvey in Harris County happened in the Kingwood/ Lake Houston area?
So again, when someone from The Woodlands says, “Well, we flooded, too,” I respectfully say, “Go to hell!” No one died there.
Be a good neighbor, MoCo. Every single time we drive through that fair county and see all the unbridled development, it terrifies us. Boatloads of cement dumped on cleared land are replacing dense forests.
It infuriates ALL of us when our elected officials ask MoCo elected officials for a little consideration and they are told to “go pound sand.” We all know it and will never forget and never forgive.
The Ultimate Day of Reckoning
Those people will answer someday for their disregard for their neighbors. Perhaps not in this lifetime. But I firmly believe they will when they meet their Maker.
Don’t be fooled by my smile in flood-mitigation meetings. I know who you are and what you have done and failed to do.
All of this is to say, there is a group of people in Kingwood fighting to protect lives, homes and businesses. This is the main reason I eagerly agreed to serve on Lake Houston’s Dredging and Maintenance District Board. From Congressman Crenshaw all the way down to the incomparable reporting from Bob Rehak to Mark Micheletti being the lone Harris County voice on the SJRA board, it will take all of us to protect our community.
Get involved Kingwood. Do not let this happen again.
Flooded neighborhood more than a mile from San Jacinto West ForkLifetimes of memories hauled to the curb became magnets for looters and vandals.Harvey Remembered. Home is where you make it, but some places are more difficult than others.
Posted by Kathleen Todd Jordan on 9/3/26
3292 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/782385772_10245317967149911_7728288425599834383_n.jpg?fit=960%2C720&ssl=1720960adminadmin2026-09-03 16:57:202026-09-03 17:02:12Through The Eyes of a Survivor: Harvey Remembered Nine Years Later
Proposed New Rule Could Mean More Wetlands Lose Protection
9/5/2026 – Yesterday, the administration proposed a new interpretation for “waters of the U.S.” (WOTUS) that could strip almost all wetlands of federal protection. Wetlands help control flooding, filter runoff, break down harmful pollutants, and provide habitat for a large share of threatened and endangered species.
According to PBS, the EPA and Army Corps will accept public comments for 30 days once the new plan is published in the Federal Register, expected in the next week.
Recent Attempts to Develop Clear Definition
The new rule supposedly will provide clarity to a landscape characterized by many shades of green. It hopes to strike a balance between property rights and pollution while cutting red tape and regulatory uncertainty.
The New York Times wrote that the new rule could strip federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands. It “would significantly narrow the definition of “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, that are protected from harmful pollution under the Clean Water Act of 1972.” The new version is more sweeping than an initial proposal released in November 2025.
The effort to redefine the rule began with a Supreme Court ruling in Sackett v. EPA back in 2023. The majority of the Court wrote that the Clean Water Act of 1977 allowed the agency to regulate only “relatively permanent” bodies of water and wetlands connected to them.
However, the Court’s opinion did not define “relatively permanent.” The NY Times article says, “In the proposal released in November, the Trump administration defined a ‘relatively permanent’ body of water as one that flowed either every day or during the ‘wet season.’ The new proposal would define it instead as one that flowed every day except for temporary interruptions like droughts lasting less than 30 days.”
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) believes the change could strip federal protection from 94 percent of the nation’s wetlands, up from 81 percent under the November 2025 proposal.
The National Wildlife Federation believes “the new plan could end protections for at least one-third of the more than 3.5 million miles of streams in the United States,” said the Times, quoting Jim Murphy, associate VP of Legal Advocacy.
But the American Farm Bureau believes it would end regulatory headaches for farmers and ranchers for unknowingly violating the law.
Provisions in Current Regulation
The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service writes that under current law, “It is illegal to drain or fill a wetland without a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The entire Texas coast is under the jurisdiction of the Corps’ Galveston District Office.”
“Before a permit can be granted, the requestor must show that the project has considered all viable alternatives and minimized impacts as much as possible. Any wetland loss must be compensated for by constructing new wetlands or by restoring or enhancing existing wetlands,” says A&M.
How Would Change in Definition Affect Lake Houston Area
It’s too early to tell exactly how a change in definition for WOTUS would affect the Lake Houston Area. We certainly have many wetlands near bodies of water that flow year round. But what does “connected” mean? Does it apply only to a swamp at a river’s edge? Or does it also include ponds in floodplains a hundred yards from a river?
This is not an academic abstraction; it lowers the bar for developers. And that could make it easier to build in floodplains, which could endanger lives and property…and increase the federal deficit.
Flooding likely costs the federal government roughly $15 billion to $25 billion a year on average in disaster relief, recovery and related expenditures, with costs soaring much higher after catastrophic storms. Because those expenditures generally aren’t offset by additional revenues or spending reductions, they effectively increase federal deficits. And that number could go even higher if you include pre-disaster flood-mitigation spending (as opposed to pure disaster relief).
The Scarborough Example
Scarborough, for instance, wants to build thousands of homes on 5300 acres in one of the most flood-prone areas in the Houston region…at the confluence of the San Jacinto West Fork with Spring, Cypress and Turkey Creeks.
Hydrologists say that it would be like “aiming a fire hose at the Humble/Kingwood area.” The City of Houston and Harris County have unanimously condemned the proposed development. And almost 10,000 concerned citizens in Montgomery and Harris Counties have signed a petition against it.
Add your voice to those who wish to protect the land and our future. Sign the petition on Change.org today.
For more about this proposed development, check out the video in this post.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 9/5/2026
3294 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.
Government Decides NOT to appeal Addicks-Barker Upstream Case to Supreme Court
9/4/2026 – In what appears to be a victory for plaintiffs in the Addicks-Barker Upstream litigation, McGehee ☆ Chang, Feiler announced today that the government has decided not to appeal to the United States Supreme Court.
Next Step: Determining Compensation for Victims
With that, the case will proceed to the final stage – determining the amount of compensation to each of the property owners in the Upstream area.
The government advised that it will be working with the law firm’s upstream team to determine and streamline an agreeable process. “The Upstream team and the government have been mediating throughout the earlier part of this year, and we are confident that a mutually agreeable method can be worked out,” said the McGehee team.
Judge Hertling previously stated and reiterated that he wants to move forward quickly and give compensation to the property owners.
Compensation Conference Coming in October
The judge will reportedly return to Houston in October and host another conference.
McGehee stated, “We are very encouraged by this development and will provide more updates as the final stage of the case progresses.”
Only three weeks ago, the government sought an extension while it considered whether to appeal to the Supreme Court. But the time for that extension ran out today.
History of Case
The Upstream and Downstream cases were split into separate groups because the cases differed fundamentally. The downstream homeowners flooded due to floodgate operation. The upstream homeowners flooded because homes were built inside the reservoirs.
The initial trial phase of the upstream case drew to a close in the second half of 2022. The judge ruled the government was liable for damages. But the government appealed on December 29, 2022. Three years later, on December 29, 2025, the Court of Appeals, after 13 months of deliberations, affirmed the trial court’s ruling on the issue of liability. It agreed that the government is liable for taking of the Upstream homeowners’ property.
The homeowners contended that when the reservoirs were built, the Corps didn’t buy enough property within them. Private developers then built homes within the reservoirs. The government warned as early as 1973 that it knew of the problem and that homes could be flooded.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 9/4/2026
3294 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Through The Eyes of a Survivor: Harvey Remembered Nine Years Later
9/3/26 – This guest post about “Hurricane Harvey Remembered” is by Kathleen Todd Jordan. Ms. Jordan grew up in Kingwood and has lived here for almost 50 years. She met the man who would later become her husband while they were both enrolled at Kingwood Middle School. So, Jordan has deep ties to the community and its residents. During Hurricane Harvey, two of her neighbors died. Many others had their homes destroyed. On the ninth anniversary of the flood, she wrote a deeply moving memoir of the event and recovery from it. Jordan is also a newly appointed board member of the Lake Houston Dredging and Maintenance District. She gave me permission to reprint her story below.
Neighbors Helping Neighbors
Pics below show our dear family-friend’s home. The living room looked as though a whirlpool picked up all of the furniture and swirled it around. Rushing water and debris had pulverized the thick, picture windows.
Seeing people’s lives through their material objects piled high to the sky … it was just heartbreaking.
Harvey Remembered: Antibiotics, Amputation, Death and Anger
Now, this is where I have ZERO tolerance for the back talk from government entities – speech emanating mainly from Montgomery County (MoCo). When people from Kingwood hear some MoCo folks saying that we are just belly aching and no one died and “we flooded, too”…I say “Don’t go there.”
After the storm, we opened our home to a friend, who otherwise would have been packed off to the George R. Brown. We helped her muck out her home and her neighbor’s. Two doors down from where she lived, we mucked out a young man’s home with the help of his mother. She slipped and fell in the mud in his kitchen.
She cut her arm when she fell. The son asked if anyone had a first aid kit. I ran home to grab what I could. A couple of days later, we heard the mother was in the hospital with an infection.
That infection turned into MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), a type of staph bacteria that is resistant to many common antibiotics. In a last ditch effort to save her life, the medical team decided to start AMPUTATING BODY PARTS. Think about this MoCo, City of Houston, GLO, Harris County. She still died.
Just two blocks away, a husband attempted to start his portable generator. He dropped dead from a heart attack. Two deaths within two blocks. Two lives extinguished. Arguably, the loss of life could have been avoided. More such avoidable tragedies happened beyond the immediate area where I was working.
What Montgomery County Needs to Understand
Everyone reading this outside of Kingwood needs to understand these memories and heartaches go far beyond the material losses that have changed each of us.
When we hear the uninformed – especially those from MoCo – say things like, “No one died,” “lowering the lake does not work,” “we want to use our boats,” almost 80,000 people here beg to differ in no uncertain terms.
Did you know that almost 50% of all deaths from Harvey in Harris County happened in the Kingwood/ Lake Houston area?
So again, when someone from The Woodlands says, “Well, we flooded, too,” I respectfully say, “Go to hell!” No one died there.
Be a good neighbor, MoCo. Every single time we drive through that fair county and see all the unbridled development, it terrifies us. Boatloads of cement dumped on cleared land are replacing dense forests.
It infuriates ALL of us when our elected officials ask MoCo elected officials for a little consideration and they are told to “go pound sand.” We all know it and will never forget and never forgive.
The Ultimate Day of Reckoning
Those people will answer someday for their disregard for their neighbors. Perhaps not in this lifetime. But I firmly believe they will when they meet their Maker.
Don’t be fooled by my smile in flood-mitigation meetings. I know who you are and what you have done and failed to do.
All of this is to say, there is a group of people in Kingwood fighting to protect lives, homes and businesses. This is the main reason I eagerly agreed to serve on Lake Houston’s Dredging and Maintenance District Board. From Congressman Crenshaw all the way down to the incomparable reporting from Bob Rehak to Mark Micheletti being the lone Harris County voice on the SJRA board, it will take all of us to protect our community.
Get involved Kingwood. Do not let this happen again.
Posted by Kathleen Todd Jordan on 9/3/26
3292 Days since Hurricane Harvey