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
9/2/26 at 4 PM – Tropical Storm Edouard to date has resembled a game of rainfall roulette for weather forecasters. Slight shifts in direction have made orders-of-magnitude differences in predicted precipitation.
Forecasters had predicted the narrow storm would hit eastern Harris County. However, it angled more north and created catastrophic flooding in Hardin County instead. Hardin lies immediately to the east of Liberty County.
Orders of Magnitude Differences Just Miles Apart
Gages in the Lake Houston Area recorded .08 inches for the last two days. Yes! Less than one tenth of an inch.
48-hour rainfall totals during TS Edouard. Screen capture at 4 pm 9/2/26
However, eastern Hardin County received 27.5 inches of rain – last night alone.
According to Harris County meteorologist Jeff Lindner, flooding continues in eastern Liberty County, Polk County, Tyler County, and Hardin County after very heavy rainfall this morning.
Doppler radar estimates from Lake Charles show a maximum of 25-28 inches over eastern Hardin County into southern Tyler County. Tyler lies immediately north of Hardin.
A Jefferson County Drainage District #6 rain gage in western Hardin County recorded 12.35 inches of rainfall in 6 hours this morning and a 24-hour total of 17.75 inches.
Screen capture from RadarScope Pro at 3PM CDT on 9/2/26 showing remnants of Edouard far north of Lake Houston Area.
Uncertainty Remains
South of Edouard, clouds have been decreasing and the air mass is warming. With afternoon heating, Lindner expects the tropical air mass to begin banding again, especially on the southern side.
According to Lindner, that could affect portions of Waller, Montgomery, Harris, Liberty, San Jacinto, and Polk Counties. Westerly flow from the circulation could bump into the southerly flow returning from the Gulf and possibly a weak sea breeze.
Lindner believes that, given the highly tropical air mass in place, hourly rainfall rates of 2-3 inches will be possible. And if this falls over areas that have already experienced significant rainfall in the last 24 hours, additional flash flooding is likely.
However, areas that have received little rainfall so far will have minimal flood risk, although some street flooding is possible. Most storm sewers can handle an inch per hour. So when rainfall rates exceed that, water can back up into streets.
Dealing with Uncertainty
The location of any additional bands remains uncertain. But models suggest banding over northern Waller and southern Montgomery Counties that sinks into portions of northern Harris County later this afternoon and evening. See predicted rainfall below for the 12 hours from Wednesday 7 pm to Thursday 7 am.
For the Lake Houston Area, Edouard was a close call. But it illustrates the need to prepare. The Harris County Flood Control District and City of Houston must accelerate their flood-mitigation activities in this area. We’ve waited long enough.
The Lake Houston Area suffered the worst flooding in Harris County during Harvey. But it has received little flood-mitigation help to date.
As of January 2026
Nine years after Harvey, we need to start building the flood-mitigation projects promised long ago. We can’t afford to keep betting on rainfall roulette.
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
Rainfall Roulette
9/2/26 at 4 PM – Tropical Storm Edouard to date has resembled a game of rainfall roulette for weather forecasters. Slight shifts in direction have made orders-of-magnitude differences in predicted precipitation.
Forecasters had predicted the narrow storm would hit eastern Harris County. However, it angled more north and created catastrophic flooding in Hardin County instead. Hardin lies immediately to the east of Liberty County.
Orders of Magnitude Differences Just Miles Apart
Gages in the Lake Houston Area recorded .08 inches for the last two days. Yes! Less than one tenth of an inch.
However, eastern Hardin County received 27.5 inches of rain – last night alone.
According to Harris County meteorologist Jeff Lindner, flooding continues in eastern Liberty County, Polk County, Tyler County, and Hardin County after very heavy rainfall this morning.
Doppler radar estimates from Lake Charles show a maximum of 25-28 inches over eastern Hardin County into southern Tyler County. Tyler lies immediately north of Hardin.
A Jefferson County Drainage District #6 rain gage in western Hardin County recorded 12.35 inches of rainfall in 6 hours this morning and a 24-hour total of 17.75 inches.
Uncertainty Remains
South of Edouard, clouds have been decreasing and the air mass is warming. With afternoon heating, Lindner expects the tropical air mass to begin banding again, especially on the southern side.
According to Lindner, that could affect portions of Waller, Montgomery, Harris, Liberty, San Jacinto, and Polk Counties. Westerly flow from the circulation could bump into the southerly flow returning from the Gulf and possibly a weak sea breeze.
Lindner believes that, given the highly tropical air mass in place, hourly rainfall rates of 2-3 inches will be possible. And if this falls over areas that have already experienced significant rainfall in the last 24 hours, additional flash flooding is likely.
However, areas that have received little rainfall so far will have minimal flood risk, although some street flooding is possible. Most storm sewers can handle an inch per hour. So when rainfall rates exceed that, water can back up into streets.
Dealing with Uncertainty
The location of any additional bands remains uncertain. But models suggest banding over northern Waller and southern Montgomery Counties that sinks into portions of northern Harris County later this afternoon and evening. See predicted rainfall below for the 12 hours from Wednesday 7 pm to Thursday 7 am.
For the Lake Houston Area, Edouard was a close call. But it illustrates the need to prepare. The Harris County Flood Control District and City of Houston must accelerate their flood-mitigation activities in this area. We’ve waited long enough.
The Lake Houston Area suffered the worst flooding in Harris County during Harvey. But it has received little flood-mitigation help to date.
As of January 2026
Nine years after Harvey, we need to start building the flood-mitigation projects promised long ago. We can’t afford to keep betting on rainfall roulette.
This is an election year. If not now, when?
Posted by Bob Rehak on 9/2/26
3291 Days since Hurricane Harvey