The National Weather Service (NWS) has launched a nationwide rollout of “experimental” flood forecasting maps. The maps show when, where and how much floodwaters will impact specific areas up to five days in advance.
NWS’s new experimental flood inundation maps help communicate the timing and magnitude of high water events by showing modeled inundated areas in blue overlay. Emergency managers may use these services to preposition resources, secure critical infrastructure and recommend evacuations and evacuation routes.
System Already Rolled Out to Houston Area
NWS has already rolled out the system for Houston and East Texas with other parts of the county to follow.
The new system should enable emergency managers to see how predicted rainfall could impact structures, communities and people.
Until now, the best NWS could do was issue a flood watch or warning for communities. But the new maps will show how far floodwaters could spread in a community. That will help people better prepare for floods and evacuate from them. For instance, it will reportedly show when roads will be cut off by rising waters.
However, the new maps can’t yet forecast urban flash flooding related to lack of storm sewer capacity.
Near Real-Time View for Emergency Managers
NWS announced the new experimental flood maps on September 26, 2023. “These new services complement and support the issuance of flood watches and warnings by providing near-real-time, high-resolution, street-level visualizations showing where, when, and how much flood waters are forecast.”
The descriptions conjure up images of floodplain maps. But they show expected flooding from approaching storms – not just the extent of flooding in a hypothetical 100-year event.
David Vallee, director, Service Innovation and Partnership Division, NOAA’s National Water Center said, “These services will dramatically improve our ability to provide impact-based decision support services to our partners so they can preposition people and resources ahead of flood events.”
Three New Tools
Three new near-real-time services will help improve flood impact information. They include:
Hourly Analysis will model flood inundation extent based on streamflow analysis.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 10/16/23 based on information from NWS
2239 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Screenshot-2023-10-16-at-1.34.08%E2%80%AFPM-e1697481825151.png?fit=1100%2C614&ssl=16141100adminadmin2023-10-16 13:46:262023-10-16 17:26:46National Weather Service Rolling Out New Flood Warning Maps
10/15/23 – Third quarter flood-mitigation spending data is now available for Harris County Flood Control District and its partners. In some ways, the data shows a continuation of previous trends. But the data also contained some surprises. The major findings:
Spending continued to dip. Slower project delivery means inflation will claim an increasingly large percentage of taxpayer dollars and may force cancellation of some bond projects.
If the last quarter of this year is anything like the first three, we could see less than half the activity in 2023 than we saw in 2020.
The trend toward investing more heavily in minority areas continued and even accelerated. But there was one notable exception – Cypress Creek and its tributaries.
An unusual $9.7 million real-estate transaction for a stormwater detention basin near the Mercer Arboretum skewed the Cypress Creek total. That was 16.5% of all HCFCD spending for the quarter.
Without it, many of the numbers below would also have been skewed. For instance, total spending and average spending per watershed would vary dramatically.
The focus on so-called “equity” spending and the Cypress Creek watershed meant 15 watersheds saw less than a million dollars in activity during the quarter. And five of those received less than $100,000.
Let’s look at each and the implications. Everything below INCLUDES the unusual real estate transaction near Mercer. In several places, I note how things would have changed without Mercer.
Overall, Slowdown Magnifies Inflation Concerns
Overall, flood-mitigation spending dipped about 5% in the third quarter compared to the previous quarter. It declined by a little more than $3 million to $58.8 million. That may not sound like much, but it continues a 3-year downward trend and creates delays that expose residents to more flood risk.
As projects are delayed, their costs also escalate due to inflation, raising concerns about whether there will be enough money in the bond to finish all the projects promised to voters.
Spending this year will likely be a hundred million dollars less than the first full year of the 2018 flood bond – when projects were ramping up. See chart below.
Annualized estimate for 2023. 23Q4 data estimated based on average of first 3 quarters.Without Mercer, the 2023 estimate would be below $200 million.
Moreover, spending will be $200 million less than the peak year of 2020 – about half of what it was then.
Halfway through the 2018 10-year flood bond, HCFCD has spent only about a third of the funds approved by voters – $1.65 billion. However, if the present slowdown continues, this will be the third straight year of decline.
The slowdown in project delivery means inflation will increasingly raise costs and undermine the purchasing power of the dollars authorized by voters.
HCFCD acknowledges the serious impact of inflation in its latest bond update to Commissioners Court, and hopes toll-road money remaining in the Flood Resilience Trust will cover any shortfall.
Average Spending in LMI Areas Growing
Data also reveals that with one exception (Cypress Creek and its tributaries), the trend of preferentially allocating funds to Low-to-Moderate-Income (LMI) areas continued and even accelerated when measured by average spending per watershed.
On average during Q3, watersheds with a majority of LMI residents (hereinafter called “LMI watersheds”) received 2.5X more funding than more affluent watersheds – $3.1 million each vs. $1.2 million. That’s up from 1.7X over the longer period since Harvey. So, the gap is widening.
Without the Mercer real-estate transaction, the average for more affluent watersheds would have been cut in half to $600,000. That would have almost doubled the ratio. The recomputed average would created a 4.7X ratio between LMI and all other watersheds for the third quarter.
That trend will likely continue for some time as projects funded by HUD through the Texas General Land Office get approved and start construction. That pot of money will spread across the income spectrum, but projects in lower income areas will likely start first.
Cypress Creek Spending Explodes
In fifteen Harris County watersheds, more than 50% of residents make above the average income for the region.
As a group, those 15 received $18.6 million last quarter – $2 million more than the $16.6 million received by the eight LMI watersheds.
However, the first group is twice the size of the second. And looking deeper within the more affluent watersheds, we can see that Cypress Creek and its tributaries (Willow and Little Cypress) received 79% of that $18.6 million last quarter.
The three Cypress watersheds received almost 4X more funding than the 12 other watersheds in the more affluent category put together.
Cypress Creek and its tributaries consumed 79% of all HCFCD/Partner spending last quarter among watersheds without a majority of LMI residents.
Here’s how that same spending looks in a bar graph.
Only the first three watersheds on the left received more than a million dollars in Q3.The twelve on right received less than $1 millioneach.
The 12 other watersheds divvied up $3.8 million; they averaged just $348 thousand each.
FOIA request. Data supplied by HCFCD.
$348,000 is one ninth of the $3.1 million average for LMI watersheds. And we know that some of those, such as the San Jacinto, have huge, unmet needs.
Cypress Knocks Brays Out of First Place
Now, let’s look at ALL watersheds in both categories. When looking only at the third quarter, Cypress Creek surged into first place. It nudged out Greens, White Oak, Brays and Sims, all of which have LMI populations greater than 50%.
Includes all 23 watersheds during 23Q3.
HCFCD finished Project Brays 15 months ago, but still managed to spend $3.8 million there last quarter. That was almost 10X more than it spent during the third quarter in the San Jacinto watershed, the county’s largest, and where the flooding was deepest. HCFCD spent only $400 thousand in the entire San Jacinto watershed last quarter.
Comparison of 33 gages in Harris County during Harvey showed San Jacinto had worst flooding.
Brays Still Ranks #1 in Total Spending Since Harvey
Since Hurricane Harvey (not just last quarter), Brays still ranks #1. But Cypress now ranks second. If you added its Little Cypress and Willow Creek tributaries in the graph below to the Cypress Creek total, they would rank #1 by more than a $100 million.
Includes all 23 watersheds since Harvey
Brays even managed to increase in the last quarter by $1.5 million while the San Jacinto decreased by $55,000.
Granted, some watersheds have smaller needs than others, but the ratio between the highest and lowest spending exceeds 300X.
Impact of Equity Formula
The spending priorities shown in this post reflect the Equity formula adopted and periodically revised by Harris County Commissioners Court.
Ironically, the language approved by voters in the flood bond never mentions the word “equity.” Paragraph 14G does say that Commissioners Court shall provide for an “equitable expenditure of funds.”
The theory is that poor people are financially less able to fix their homes after a flood. I accept that.
But some commissioners are using that to push the idea of fixing 500-year flooding in poor neighborhoods before fixing 2-year flooding in more affluent communities.
Therefore, I ask:
At what point do we do we say enough money has gone into an LMI watershed and start spending elsewhere to reduce greater flood risk?
Why isn’t HCFCD publishing updated flood risk maps as it completes mitigation projects so we can make objective comparisons and see what our tax dollars bought?
Why does Harris County’s formula for allocating flood-mitigation funds NOT consider:
Flood damage to homes, businesses and retirement communities?
Damage to infrastructure, such as bridges, schools, hospitals, grocery stores, traffic arteries, water and sewage treatment plants, etc.?
Height of floodwaters, i.e., the severity of flooding?
Deaths caused by floods?
Is a poor person’s carpet worth more than a rich person’s life?
Will there be enough money in the flood bond and flood resilience trust to finish all projects in the bond given inflation?
Only 20% of Americans now say they trust government “just about always or most of the time.” That’s something to think about as we near the next election.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 10/15/23and updated 10/16/23 with additional info on Cypress Creek
2238 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.
On Friday, 10/13/2023, Bayou Land Conservancy (BLC) staff and board members met with supporters and legislators for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at BLC’s new Arrowwood Preserve on Spring Creek in Tomball west of 249.
BLC’s Arrowwood Preserve is in the floodplain of Spring Creek just north of Lone Star College – Tomball.
Land Donated by Two Sand Miners in 2020
The occasion: dedication of a new outdoor classroom for environmental education. Years of work that began with the donation of 117 acres to the Bayou Land Conservancy in 2020 culminated yesterday. Two sand miners, Don Poarch and Joe Swinbank, owners of Sprint Sand & Clay, donated the ecologically diverse land across Spring Creek from Lone Star College-Tomball.
The preserve takes its name, Arrowwood, from a 6-8 foot shrub that’s a member of the Honeysuckle family. The preserve marks the western extent of the plant’s natural range.
Since acquisition of the land, BLC staff, volunteers and supporters have developed a management plan, blazed trails, erected boardwalks, and built the new outdoor classroom.
BLC developed the open-air classroom in partnership with William & Madeleine Welder Smith Foundation; The Ralph H. and Ruth J. McCullough Foundation; and Plains All-American Pipeline Company.
An Ecological Gem Now an Outdoor College
The photos below show some of the quiet, natural beauty of the Arrowwood Preserve.
Arrowwood is 117 acres of wetlands also populated by hardwoodsand some pines.
Spring Creek cuts through the Arrowwood Preserve.View looking south from above the new outdoor classroom.Looking East. The preserve extends to SH249, left to right in the middle. Jill Boullion, Executive Director of the BLC, cuts the ribbon to honor years of hard work by staff, board members and supporters.New outdoor classroom in background.After the ribbon cutting, attendees explored the beauty of wilderness in the city.
The land will connect to the Spring Creek Greenway which extends all the way southeast to US59.
Value of Nature in Flood Mitigation
It’s hard to put an exact dollar figure on the value of such a preserve. Traditional benefit/cost ratios used in flood-mitigation projects quantify the benefits of massive engineering/construction projects against the cost of avoided damages.
But this land is still natural. So damage to structures is not a consideration. The value of damages avoided would depend on how many people with bad judgement might choose to build on land that goes deep under water during frequent floods. At 249, Spring Creek floodwaters rose 11.4 feet above flood stage during Harvey. That equals 27.5 feet above the normal elevation!
Need for New Formula to Weigh Prevention Against Correction
But there’s another way to look at this: the value of prevention compared to the cost of correction. Our parents all taught us that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
The current mapped floodplains around and in Arrowwood look like this.
From FEMA’s National Flood Hazard Layer Viewer.Striped area = floodway of Spring Creek. Aqua = 1% annual chance of flooding. Tan = .02% annual chance.
Keep in mind that the map above was drawn in 2014 – before Harvey. FEMA has not yet released new post-Harvey flood maps. The floodplains will reportedly expand by 50% to 100%.
So, protecting this land from development will save money several ways. It will eliminate or reduce the:
Injuries and lives lost.
Cost of flood repairs.
Disruption to people’s lives after a flood.
Wasted construction dollars in unsafe areas that could have built safe homes on higher ground.
Buyouts after repetitive flooding.
Loss of home values.
Lawsuits.
Urban decay.
Taxpayer subsidies for the National Flood Insurance Program.
Cost of engineering and environmental studies designed to determine how to fix the problems.
Construction costs to build flood-mitigation measures, such as stormwater detention basins and channel widening
The need for expensive bulkheads and dikes to control river migration.
Higher tax rates to pay for many of the costs above.
Then, balance all those uncertainties and negatives against the positives of preservation.
Forests also slow down floodwaters by creating friction. This reduces severity of damage and gives people downstream more time to evacuate if necessary.
Clearly, determining the value of preservation demands a different kind of formula that considers different costs and different benefits.
Perhaps the next generation of future homeowners and leaders from Lone Star College will learn such things at BLC’s new outdoor classroom on Spring Creek and change the world for the better. I hope so.
Support Bayou Land Conservancy
This is an area that should stay natural forever. And with the help of the Bayou Land Conservancy, it will. BLC is an organization making a huge difference in a quiet way. It deserves the support of each and every one of us.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 10/14/23
2237 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/20231013-RJR_2846.jpg?fit=1100%2C733&ssl=17331100adminadmin2023-10-14 04:56:122023-10-14 11:46:10Bayou Land Conservancy Ribbon Cutting on Spring Creek
National Weather Service Rolling Out New Flood Warning Maps
The National Weather Service (NWS) has launched a nationwide rollout of “experimental” flood forecasting maps. The maps show when, where and how much floodwaters will impact specific areas up to five days in advance.
System Already Rolled Out to Houston Area
NWS has already rolled out the system for Houston and East Texas with other parts of the county to follow.
The new system should enable emergency managers to see how predicted rainfall could impact structures, communities and people.
Until now, the best NWS could do was issue a flood watch or warning for communities. But the new maps will show how far floodwaters could spread in a community. That will help people better prepare for floods and evacuate from them. For instance, it will reportedly show when roads will be cut off by rising waters.
However, the new maps can’t yet forecast urban flash flooding related to lack of storm sewer capacity.
Near Real-Time View for Emergency Managers
NWS announced the new experimental flood maps on September 26, 2023. “These new services complement and support the issuance of flood watches and warnings by providing near-real-time, high-resolution, street-level visualizations showing where, when, and how much flood waters are forecast.”
David Vallee, director, Service Innovation and Partnership Division, NOAA’s National Water Center said, “These services will dramatically improve our ability to provide impact-based decision support services to our partners so they can preposition people and resources ahead of flood events.”
Three New Tools
Three new near-real-time services will help improve flood impact information. They include:
For more on how the system will work, see this story map based on Houston and Hurricane Harvey. Imagine how many lives could have been saved if we had this system then!
Posted by Bob Rehak on 10/16/23 based on information from NWS
2239 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Third-Quarter Flood-Mitigation Spending Trends, Surprises
10/15/23 – Third quarter flood-mitigation spending data is now available for Harris County Flood Control District and its partners. In some ways, the data shows a continuation of previous trends. But the data also contained some surprises. The major findings:
Let’s look at each and the implications. Everything below INCLUDES the unusual real estate transaction near Mercer. In several places, I note how things would have changed without Mercer.
Overall, Slowdown Magnifies Inflation Concerns
Overall, flood-mitigation spending dipped about 5% in the third quarter compared to the previous quarter. It declined by a little more than $3 million to $58.8 million. That may not sound like much, but it continues a 3-year downward trend and creates delays that expose residents to more flood risk.
As projects are delayed, their costs also escalate due to inflation, raising concerns about whether there will be enough money in the bond to finish all the projects promised to voters.
Spending this year will likely be a hundred million dollars less than the first full year of the 2018 flood bond – when projects were ramping up. See chart below.
Moreover, spending will be $200 million less than the peak year of 2020 – about half of what it was then.
Halfway through the 2018 10-year flood bond, HCFCD has spent only about a third of the funds approved by voters – $1.65 billion. However, if the present slowdown continues, this will be the third straight year of decline.
The slowdown in project delivery means inflation will increasingly raise costs and undermine the purchasing power of the dollars authorized by voters.
HCFCD acknowledges the serious impact of inflation in its latest bond update to Commissioners Court, and hopes toll-road money remaining in the Flood Resilience Trust will cover any shortfall.
Average Spending in LMI Areas Growing
Data also reveals that with one exception (Cypress Creek and its tributaries), the trend of preferentially allocating funds to Low-to-Moderate-Income (LMI) areas continued and even accelerated when measured by average spending per watershed.
On average during Q3, watersheds with a majority of LMI residents (hereinafter called “LMI watersheds”) received 2.5X more funding than more affluent watersheds – $3.1 million each vs. $1.2 million. That’s up from 1.7X over the longer period since Harvey. So, the gap is widening.
Without the Mercer real-estate transaction, the average for more affluent watersheds would have been cut in half to $600,000. That would have almost doubled the ratio. The recomputed average would created a 4.7X ratio between LMI and all other watersheds for the third quarter.
That trend will likely continue for some time as projects funded by HUD through the Texas General Land Office get approved and start construction. That pot of money will spread across the income spectrum, but projects in lower income areas will likely start first.
Cypress Creek Spending Explodes
In fifteen Harris County watersheds, more than 50% of residents make above the average income for the region.
As a group, those 15 received $18.6 million last quarter – $2 million more than the $16.6 million received by the eight LMI watersheds.
However, the first group is twice the size of the second. And looking deeper within the more affluent watersheds, we can see that Cypress Creek and its tributaries (Willow and Little Cypress) received 79% of that $18.6 million last quarter.
Here’s how that same spending looks in a bar graph.
$348,000 is one ninth of the $3.1 million average for LMI watersheds. And we know that some of those, such as the San Jacinto, have huge, unmet needs.
Cypress Knocks Brays Out of First Place
Now, let’s look at ALL watersheds in both categories. When looking only at the third quarter, Cypress Creek surged into first place. It nudged out Greens, White Oak, Brays and Sims, all of which have LMI populations greater than 50%.
HCFCD finished Project Brays 15 months ago, but still managed to spend $3.8 million there last quarter. That was almost 10X more than it spent during the third quarter in the San Jacinto watershed, the county’s largest, and where the flooding was deepest. HCFCD spent only $400 thousand in the entire San Jacinto watershed last quarter.
Brays Still Ranks #1 in Total Spending Since Harvey
Since Hurricane Harvey (not just last quarter), Brays still ranks #1. But Cypress now ranks second. If you added its Little Cypress and Willow Creek tributaries in the graph below to the Cypress Creek total, they would rank #1 by more than a $100 million.
Brays even managed to increase in the last quarter by $1.5 million while the San Jacinto decreased by $55,000.
Granted, some watersheds have smaller needs than others, but the ratio between the highest and lowest spending exceeds 300X.
Impact of Equity Formula
The spending priorities shown in this post reflect the Equity formula adopted and periodically revised by Harris County Commissioners Court.
Ironically, the language approved by voters in the flood bond never mentions the word “equity.” Paragraph 14G does say that Commissioners Court shall provide for an “equitable expenditure of funds.”
However, most dictionaries define “equitable” as “nondiscriminatory.” Yet the current formula prioritizes projects largely on the racial composition of neighborhoods as described in the CDC’s social vulnerability index.
The theory is that poor people are financially less able to fix their homes after a flood. I accept that.
But some commissioners are using that to push the idea of fixing 500-year flooding in poor neighborhoods before fixing 2-year flooding in more affluent communities.
Therefore, I ask:
So many questions. So few answers. Perhaps this explains why trust in government has reached a 70-year low.
Only 20% of Americans now say they trust government “just about always or most of the time.” That’s something to think about as we near the next election.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 10/15/23 and updated 10/16/23 with additional info on Cypress Creek
2238 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.
Bayou Land Conservancy Ribbon Cutting on Spring Creek
On Friday, 10/13/2023, Bayou Land Conservancy (BLC) staff and board members met with supporters and legislators for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at BLC’s new Arrowwood Preserve on Spring Creek in Tomball west of 249.
Land Donated by Two Sand Miners in 2020
The occasion: dedication of a new outdoor classroom for environmental education. Years of work that began with the donation of 117 acres to the Bayou Land Conservancy in 2020 culminated yesterday. Two sand miners, Don Poarch and Joe Swinbank, owners of Sprint Sand & Clay, donated the ecologically diverse land across Spring Creek from Lone Star College-Tomball.
The preserve takes its name, Arrowwood, from a 6-8 foot shrub that’s a member of the Honeysuckle family. The preserve marks the western extent of the plant’s natural range.
Since acquisition of the land, BLC staff, volunteers and supporters have developed a management plan, blazed trails, erected boardwalks, and built the new outdoor classroom.
BLC developed the open-air classroom in partnership with William & Madeleine Welder Smith Foundation; The Ralph H. and Ruth J. McCullough Foundation; and Plains All-American Pipeline Company.
An Ecological Gem Now an Outdoor College
The photos below show some of the quiet, natural beauty of the Arrowwood Preserve.
Arrowwood is 117 acres of wetlands also populated by hardwoods and some pines.
The land will connect to the Spring Creek Greenway which extends all the way southeast to US59.
Value of Nature in Flood Mitigation
It’s hard to put an exact dollar figure on the value of such a preserve. Traditional benefit/cost ratios used in flood-mitigation projects quantify the benefits of massive engineering/construction projects against the cost of avoided damages.
But this land is still natural. So damage to structures is not a consideration. The value of damages avoided would depend on how many people with bad judgement might choose to build on land that goes deep under water during frequent floods. At 249, Spring Creek floodwaters rose 11.4 feet above flood stage during Harvey. That equals 27.5 feet above the normal elevation!
Need for New Formula to Weigh Prevention Against Correction
But there’s another way to look at this: the value of prevention compared to the cost of correction. Our parents all taught us that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
The current mapped floodplains around and in Arrowwood look like this.
Keep in mind that the map above was drawn in 2014 – before Harvey. FEMA has not yet released new post-Harvey flood maps. The floodplains will reportedly expand by 50% to 100%.
So, protecting this land from development will save money several ways. It will eliminate or reduce the:
Then, balance all those uncertainties and negatives against the positives of preservation.
Forests also slow down floodwaters by creating friction. This reduces severity of damage and gives people downstream more time to evacuate if necessary.
Perhaps the next generation of future homeowners and leaders from Lone Star College will learn such things at BLC’s new outdoor classroom on Spring Creek and change the world for the better. I hope so.
Support Bayou Land Conservancy
This is an area that should stay natural forever. And with the help of the Bayou Land Conservancy, it will. BLC is an organization making a huge difference in a quiet way. It deserves the support of each and every one of us.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 10/14/23
2237 Days since Hurricane Harvey