During July 2023, Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) contractor Sprint Sand and Clay, LLC, excavated 5,754 cubic yards from a new Woodridge Village stormwater detention basin. That brought Sprints’ grand total up to 135, 751 cubic yards.
5,764 cubic yards equals another 3.6 acre feet. The previous month, Sprint excavated 5 acre feet. So, excavation during July declined 28%. At the current rate, Sprint would take another 8 months to bring detention volume up to Atlas-14 requirements (see table below).
At the end of July, excavation had reached 92.6% of Atlas-14 requirements, up slightly from June, when it had reached 92%.
Why Atlas 14 is Important
Atlas-14 defines the current standard for safely containing a 100-year rainfall. The lack of detention basin capacity contributed to the flooding of hundreds of homes along Taylor Gully twice in 2019, after Perry contractors clearcut the property.
However, the good news is that Sprint’s contract could eventually take the site well beyond Atlas-14.
Before/After Photos Show July Progress
I took the first photo below on July 1, 2023.
Woodridge Village July 1, 2023, looking NE.
I took the other photos below at the end of July.
July 29, 2023. The big difference appears to be the area filled with water.
The outline has changed little. But additional water in the absence of rain and the presence of blistering heat suggests excavation may have reached the water table.
During the month of July, when temperatures pushed a 100 degrees every day, the nearest gage received only 2 inches of rain. And most of that was three weeks before the photo above.
HCFCD often prefers wet bottom retention basins because they reduce mowing costs, but the design of this basin is not yet complete.
Those circular patterns may indicate the use of scrapers to lower the bottom of the new basin gradually.However, north (right) of the exposed water, contractors still seem to be using excavators to expand the edges of the area.
Under HCFCD Excavation and Removal contracts, contractors are free to excavate where they want within the provided footprint.
Green area indicates rough outline of new basin.
Where Does Woodridge Village Excavation Go From Here?
HCFCD’s Excavation and Removal contract with Sprint Sand & Clay calls for excavating up to 500,000 cubic yards. Sprint excavated approximately 8,000 cubic yards (5 acre feet) in June.
Any excavation beyond Atlas-14 needs would create a safety hedge against future needs should they increase.
Calculations based on original construction plans, HCFCD monthly reports, Atlas-14 Requirements and Sprint contract. Sprint could excavate down to or even slightly past the small grove of trees in the top center.
Sprint will make only $1,000 from its Woodridge Village excavation contract with HCFCD, but will make its profit by selling the dirt at market rates. It’s a good deal for taxpayers, but carries some uncertainty with it.
If the demand for dirt dries up, excavation could slow or stop.
But simply excavating the dirt isn’t the end of the job. Harris County still needs to slope the sides, plant grass, and tie the new basin into the site’s existing stormwater-detention-basin network. Engineers are reportedly working on plans for all that, according to HCFCD.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 8/1/2023
2163 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/20230729-DJI_0158.jpg?fit=1100%2C733&ssl=17331100adminadmin2023-08-01 15:29:352023-08-01 17:05:56Woodridge Village Excavation Slows in July
Where can you find reliable climate data if you want to cross check a claim you hear on the news? Harris County Meteorologist Jeff Lindner referred me to two sites recently: The U.S. Drought Monitor and the Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program (SCIPP) website. To help produce these resources, NOAA has collaborated with universities and state climate offices around the country. They make invaluable, data-driven resources for fact checking, research and public-policy planners.
Is It This Hot Everywhere?
It feels as though the lead story on the evening news every night for last two months has been the extreme heat in Phoenix. Simultaneously, the Houston area has experienced extreme heat and humidity, and the resurgence of drought conditions. The news stories inevitably tie any departure from “normal” to “climate change” and blame it on the burning of fossil fuels – usually without citing the source of their information.
So, imagine my surprise when I explored the U.S. Drought Monitor for the week of 7/25/23 and discovered that areas to the north and east of Texas were wetter and cooler than normal. “Record-setting rains were recorded over western Kentucky and the area had significant flooding,” they said. And “Temperatures were cooler than normal over most of the central Plains, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic with departures of 2-4 degrees below normal widespread.”
While the Southwest drought was accelerating last week in Texas, New Mexico and southern Arizona, it actually lessened/improved across a wide belt covering the middle of the country.
Climate Is an Average of Cycles
While still at U.S. Drought Monitor, I looked up Texas droughts since 2000.
Colors show the intensity of droughts and the time scale across the bottom shows their length and frequency.
Note the gaps between droughts. Also note how the relatively light gap from 2015 to 2019 corresponds to the Tax Day, Memorial Day, Harvey and Imelda floods we had during that period.
The graph below measures departures from average annual precipitation for the upper Texas Coast. This graph goes back to 1895. So to compare it to the one above, focus on the far right. Notice the big dip (brown area) around 2010, then the green peak that corresponds to the flood years.
128 years of precipitation data for the upper Texas Coast. Shows annual departures from (normal).From SCIPP.
Note how the largest brown area corresponds to the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s. But also note how peaks follow valleys in cycles.
While still on the SCIPP web site, I found another drought tool that lets you look up precipitation by date over various time periods. It’s still not fully functional yet. So far, they only have data for Louisiana. But when I looked up data for July 23-29, it compared the same week going back to 1900. The numbers below are less important than the dates associated with them in the last two columns.
Note how virtually all of the wettest and driest weeks on record occurred more than 90 years ago, before the rise of the internal combustion engine.
From SCIPP website “drought tool” page.Emphasis added.
Also note that some of the wettest weeks on record for Louisiana occurred during those Dust Bowl years; Louisiana was not part of the Dust Bowl geographically.
Elsewhere on the SCIPP site, I found pages and tools that let you compare rainfall and temperature by year and month. Here’s where we are so far for 2023.
But look at 2017, the year of Hurricane Harvey. They needed to establish a totally new vertical scale for rainfall!
The last SCIPP chart that I’ll discuss shows the average temperatures; daily highs/lows; minimums and maximums for any given reporting station.
NOAA defines “climate” as a 30-year moving average.
SCIPP has dozens of other useful tools for students, fact checkers, and weather bugs to explore.
What Causes Drought/Flood Cycles?
Various factors influence drought/flood cycles. They include climatic, environmental, and geological elements. Cycles are often region-specific and caused by multiple factors. According to ChatGPT, primary causes include:
Climate variations, such as El Niño and La Niña
Ocean currents and temperatures
Atmospheric circulation patterns
Topography and geography, such as mountains, proximity to large bodies of water, etc.
Land use and vegetation changes, such as deforestation, urbanization, and agricultural practices (a major factor in the Dust Bowl years).
Natural disasters, such as hurricanes
Rainfall variability. Even absent climatic changes, certain regions naturally experience periods of higher or lower rainfall.
Specific causes and interactions of these factors can vary from region to region.
In some cases, multiple factors may coincide, leading to more severe and prolonged drought or flood events.
Beware of generalizations about climate change based on individual events, short time periods, and isolated locations.
Climate Disasters in Historical Context
Understanding these complexities is essential for better preparedness and mitigation strategies to minimize the impacts of such natural cycles.
Climate disasters have existed for thousands of years. Go to the Four Corners area and visit Chaco Canyon, Canyon de Chelly or Mesa Verde. A prolonged drought contributed to wiping out the Anasazi culture a thousand years ago.
“Glacial periods last tens of thousands of years. Temperatures are much colder, and ice covers more of the planet. On the other hand, interglacial periods last only a few thousand years and the climate conditions are similar to those on Earth today. We are in an interglacial period right now,” according to the American Museum of Natural History.
Sea levels can rise or fall more than a hundred meters between glacial cycles, which have existed for billions of years.
So when you hear the relentless drumbeat of “climate change” every day without data to back it up, now you know how to check whether the reporters did their homework.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/31/2023
2062 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Screenshot-2023-07-31-at-11.21.19-AM.png?fit=2636%2C1220&ssl=112202636adminadmin2023-07-31 16:25:022023-07-31 16:25:03Where to Find Reliable Climate Data
No other watershed comes close to 42%. To understand where the most people live with the most flood risk, see the table below. I compiled it from reports by the 15 regional flood planning groups in Texas.
Column 3 shows people living in 100-year floodplain (1% annual chance) and Column 4 shows the 500-year (.2% annual chance) floodplain population.
When looking at all people living in floodplains, Texas has almost 5.9 million. The last column shows where the largest concentrations of those people reside:
Only two other watersheds, the Trinity and Lower Rio Grande, reported double-digit percentages.
Trinity had 11.7%.
Lower Rio Grande had 17%.
No other watershed even made it over 5% of the floodplain dwellers.
The pie chart below really drives home the lopsided percentage of the state’s flood-plain dwellers living in the San Jacinto basin. San Jacinto is the large green area.
Compiled from data reported by each of Texas’ Regional Flood Planning Groups.
The San Jacinto basin has more people living in floodplains than the next five watersheds put together.
Possible Reasons for San Jacinto Issues
The TWDB report does not explain why. Likely, a number of factors contribute to the high percentage:
The state’s largest concentration of people, jobs, industry
Rapid growth and lax enforcement of development regulations
Insufficient upstream mitigation
Proximity to coast, tropical storms/hurricanes
High rainfall rates
Low, flat terrain
Floodplain Dwellers as Percent of State’s Total Population
The U.S. Census Bureau now estimates that 30,029,572 people live in Texas. With almost 5.9 million of them living in a 100- or 500-year floodplain, that means a whopping one in five live in floodplains.
Of the 20% of Texans who live in floodplains:
8% live in a 100-year (1% annual chance) floodplain
12% live in a 500-year (0.2% annual chance) floodplain.
So, statewide, more people prefer to live in the less risky floodplains. But that’s not the case in every watershed. See the San Antonio watershed in the table above. Three times more people live in the riskier, 100-year floodplain than the 500-year.
Coastline Concentrations
The numbers also show concentrations of floodplain dwellers near other parts of the Texas coastline.
The lower Rio Grande has 13 times more people living in a floodplain than the upper Rio Grande.
The lower Colorado has twice as many people living in a floodplain than the upper Colorado.
The lower Brazos has 2.5 times more people living in a floodplain than the upper Brazos.
The San Jacinto, which is one of the state’s shorter rivers and mostly near the coastline has the highest number of people in floodplains by far.
Coastal areas also face different issues than inland communities. According to NOAA, “These include increased risks from high-tide flooding, hurricanes, sea level rise, erosion, and climate change.”
If I’ve learned one thing about flood prevention, it’s that nothing moves quickly.
Need for More Awareness
And that gives me a sinking feeling – especially knowing how few people have flood insurance and how many more need it.
The floodplains in our area are huge. We have a lot of people. And thus, the scary numbers for the San Jacinto watershed. And also consider this. The numbers above are likely understated, because they only reflect riverine flooding and not street flooding from poorly maintained ditches.
With few affordable structural solutions in sight, TWDB should spend some of their funds on public awareness and education while we wait for projects to happen. Few people understand how much flood risk they live with…until they flood.
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Screenshot-2023-07-29-at-9.01.17-AM.png?fit=1536%2C792&ssl=17921536adminadmin2023-07-29 09:52:212023-07-29 19:14:42More People Live in Texas Floodplains than Live in 30 States
Woodridge Village Excavation Slows in July
During July 2023, Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) contractor Sprint Sand and Clay, LLC, excavated 5,754 cubic yards from a new Woodridge Village stormwater detention basin. That brought Sprints’ grand total up to 135, 751 cubic yards.
5,764 cubic yards equals another 3.6 acre feet. The previous month, Sprint excavated 5 acre feet. So, excavation during July declined 28%. At the current rate, Sprint would take another 8 months to bring detention volume up to Atlas-14 requirements (see table below).
At the end of July, excavation had reached 92.6% of Atlas-14 requirements, up slightly from June, when it had reached 92%.
Why Atlas 14 is Important
Atlas-14 defines the current standard for safely containing a 100-year rainfall. The lack of detention basin capacity contributed to the flooding of hundreds of homes along Taylor Gully twice in 2019, after Perry contractors clearcut the property.
HCFCD and City of Houston purchased the property from Perry in March 2021. Excavation of additional stormwater detention capacity started in January 2022. At the time, it had only 70% of the required detention capacity under Atlas 14.
NOAA is already working on revising Atlas 14. Atlas 15 will incorporate predicted climate-change impacts and feature recurrence intervals up to 1000 years.
However, the good news is that Sprint’s contract could eventually take the site well beyond Atlas-14.
Before/After Photos Show July Progress
I took the first photo below on July 1, 2023.
I took the other photos below at the end of July.
The outline has changed little. But additional water in the absence of rain and the presence of blistering heat suggests excavation may have reached the water table.
During the month of July, when temperatures pushed a 100 degrees every day, the nearest gage received only 2 inches of rain. And most of that was three weeks before the photo above.
HCFCD often prefers wet bottom retention basins because they reduce mowing costs, but the design of this basin is not yet complete.
Under HCFCD Excavation and Removal contracts, contractors are free to excavate where they want within the provided footprint.
Where Does Woodridge Village Excavation Go From Here?
HCFCD’s Excavation and Removal contract with Sprint Sand & Clay calls for excavating up to 500,000 cubic yards. Sprint excavated approximately 8,000 cubic yards (5 acre feet) in June.
Any excavation beyond Atlas-14 needs would create a safety hedge against future needs should they increase.
NOAA is already working on updating the Atlas 14 requirements and should release Atlas 15 before the end of this decade.
Here’s how the various stages look in a table.
Sprint will make only $1,000 from its Woodridge Village excavation contract with HCFCD, but will make its profit by selling the dirt at market rates. It’s a good deal for taxpayers, but carries some uncertainty with it.
If the demand for dirt dries up, excavation could slow or stop.
But simply excavating the dirt isn’t the end of the job. Harris County still needs to slope the sides, plant grass, and tie the new basin into the site’s existing stormwater-detention-basin network. Engineers are reportedly working on plans for all that, according to HCFCD.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 8/1/2023
2163 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Where to Find Reliable Climate Data
Where can you find reliable climate data if you want to cross check a claim you hear on the news? Harris County Meteorologist Jeff Lindner referred me to two sites recently: The U.S. Drought Monitor and the Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program (SCIPP) website. To help produce these resources, NOAA has collaborated with universities and state climate offices around the country. They make invaluable, data-driven resources for fact checking, research and public-policy planners.
Is It This Hot Everywhere?
It feels as though the lead story on the evening news every night for last two months has been the extreme heat in Phoenix. Simultaneously, the Houston area has experienced extreme heat and humidity, and the resurgence of drought conditions. The news stories inevitably tie any departure from “normal” to “climate change” and blame it on the burning of fossil fuels – usually without citing the source of their information.
So, imagine my surprise when I explored the U.S. Drought Monitor for the week of 7/25/23 and discovered that areas to the north and east of Texas were wetter and cooler than normal. “Record-setting rains were recorded over western Kentucky and the area had significant flooding,” they said. And “Temperatures were cooler than normal over most of the central Plains, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic with departures of 2-4 degrees below normal widespread.”
Climate Is an Average of Cycles
While still at U.S. Drought Monitor, I looked up Texas droughts since 2000.
Note the gaps between droughts. Also note how the relatively light gap from 2015 to 2019 corresponds to the Tax Day, Memorial Day, Harvey and Imelda floods we had during that period.
The graph below measures departures from average annual precipitation for the upper Texas Coast. This graph goes back to 1895. So to compare it to the one above, focus on the far right. Notice the big dip (brown area) around 2010, then the green peak that corresponds to the flood years.
Note how the largest brown area corresponds to the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s. But also note how peaks follow valleys in cycles.
While still on the SCIPP web site, I found another drought tool that lets you look up precipitation by date over various time periods. It’s still not fully functional yet. So far, they only have data for Louisiana. But when I looked up data for July 23-29, it compared the same week going back to 1900. The numbers below are less important than the dates associated with them in the last two columns.
Note how virtually all of the wettest and driest weeks on record occurred more than 90 years ago, before the rise of the internal combustion engine.
Also note that some of the wettest weeks on record for Louisiana occurred during those Dust Bowl years; Louisiana was not part of the Dust Bowl geographically.
Elsewhere on the SCIPP site, I found pages and tools that let you compare rainfall and temperature by year and month. Here’s where we are so far for 2023.
But look at 2017, the year of Hurricane Harvey. They needed to establish a totally new vertical scale for rainfall!
The last SCIPP chart that I’ll discuss shows the average temperatures; daily highs/lows; minimums and maximums for any given reporting station.
SCIPP has dozens of other useful tools for students, fact checkers, and weather bugs to explore.
What Causes Drought/Flood Cycles?
Various factors influence drought/flood cycles. They include climatic, environmental, and geological elements. Cycles are often region-specific and caused by multiple factors. According to ChatGPT, primary causes include:
Specific causes and interactions of these factors can vary from region to region.
Beware of generalizations about climate change based on individual events, short time periods, and isolated locations.
Climate Disasters in Historical Context
Understanding these complexities is essential for better preparedness and mitigation strategies to minimize the impacts of such natural cycles.
Climate disasters have existed for thousands of years. Go to the Four Corners area and visit Chaco Canyon, Canyon de Chelly or Mesa Verde. A prolonged drought contributed to wiping out the Anasazi culture a thousand years ago.
Likewise, the Texas shoreline has been advancing and retreating for millions of years. Sea levels can rise or fall more than a hundred meters between glacial periods.
“Glacial periods last tens of thousands of years. Temperatures are much colder, and ice covers more of the planet. On the other hand, interglacial periods last only a few thousand years and the climate conditions are similar to those on Earth today. We are in an interglacial period right now,” according to the American Museum of Natural History.
Sea levels can rise or fall more than a hundred meters between glacial cycles, which have existed for billions of years.
So when you hear the relentless drumbeat of “climate change” every day without data to back it up, now you know how to check whether the reporters did their homework.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/31/2023
2062 Days since Hurricane Harvey
More People Live in Texas Floodplains than Live in 30 States
According to Texas Water Development Board data compiled for the first state flood plan, 5.9 million Texans live in 100- or 500-year floodplains. That means more people live in Texas floodplains than live in 30 states. Yep. Thirty entire states have populations smaller than that of Texas floodplains.
Other key observations also emerge from the data:
Where Biggest Problems Are
No other watershed comes close to 42%. To understand where the most people live with the most flood risk, see the table below. I compiled it from reports by the 15 regional flood planning groups in Texas.
When looking at all people living in floodplains, Texas has almost 5.9 million. The last column shows where the largest concentrations of those people reside:
The pie chart below really drives home the lopsided percentage of the state’s flood-plain dwellers living in the San Jacinto basin. San Jacinto is the large green area.
Possible Reasons for San Jacinto Issues
The TWDB report does not explain why. Likely, a number of factors contribute to the high percentage:
Floodplain Dwellers as Percent of State’s Total Population
The U.S. Census Bureau now estimates that 30,029,572 people live in Texas. With almost 5.9 million of them living in a 100- or 500-year floodplain, that means a whopping one in five live in floodplains.
Of the 20% of Texans who live in floodplains:
So, statewide, more people prefer to live in the less risky floodplains. But that’s not the case in every watershed. See the San Antonio watershed in the table above. Three times more people live in the riskier, 100-year floodplain than the 500-year.
Coastline Concentrations
The numbers also show concentrations of floodplain dwellers near other parts of the Texas coastline.
This 2014 NOAA study showed that 40% of the U.S. population lives in coastal counties. Density is far higher in coastal counties compared to inland areas. Coastal counties have 40% of the population but only 10% of the land.
Coastal areas also face different issues than inland communities. According to NOAA, “These include increased risks from high-tide flooding, hurricanes, sea level rise, erosion, and climate change.”
Cost of Making People Safe
The San Jacinto Regional Flood Planning Group recommended $46 billion worth of studies and mitigation projects in its regional plan. And the San Jacinto is just one of 15 watersheds in the state!
In sharp contrast to the magnitude of mitigation needs, the legislature voted only approximately $1 billion for flood prevention projects this year.
If I’ve learned one thing about flood prevention, it’s that nothing moves quickly.
Need for More Awareness
And that gives me a sinking feeling – especially knowing how few people have flood insurance and how many more need it.
The floodplains in our area are huge. We have a lot of people. And thus, the scary numbers for the San Jacinto watershed. And also consider this. The numbers above are likely understated, because they only reflect riverine flooding and not street flooding from poorly maintained ditches.
With few affordable structural solutions in sight, TWDB should spend some of their funds on public awareness and education while we wait for projects to happen. Few people understand how much flood risk they live with…until they flood.
For the entire 63-page report, see TWDB Board Agenda/Item #8 from their July 25th meeting. (Caution: 33 meg download.)
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/29/23
2160 Days since Hurricane Har vey