On 6/28/23, civic leaders from all levels of government gathered to celebrate the acquisition of enough funding to finally begin renovating Poor-Farm Ditch.
Poor-Farm Ditch runs from Greenway Plaza on the north to Brays Bayou on the south between West University Place and South Side Place. Harris County Flood Control District started studying ditch improvements more than 20 years ago. The 70-year-old, crumbling concrete ditch carries stormwater runoff from 1,330 highly developed acres.
Numerous Problems Associated with Poor-Farm Ditch
Poor-Farm Ditch has several problems:
Pieces of the crumbling concrete periodically collapse into the ditch and block it, exacerbating flooding.
Erosion threatens homes and businesses, which crowd the ditch on either side.
Adjacent properties have been built up as much as five feet. The existing channel walls were not designed to support that much weight.
Railroad ties and other earth-retaining features (used to stabilize the extra fill) have failed and fallen into the ditch, reducing its hydraulic capacity by 50% in places.
The channel’s width varies along its length, creating choke points in some places. Parts can handle a 100-year rain with room to spare while others can only handle a 10-year rain.
Encroachments have been constructed within the Harris County Flood Control District’s (HCFCD) right of way.
Press Conference Celebrates Funding Success At Long Last
U.S. Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher who secured $9.9 million for the $30+ million project kicked off today’s press conference by thanking all the officials and staff members present.
Left to right: West University Place Mayor Susan Sample, U.S. Representative Lizzie Fletcher, Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis (speaking), Southside Place Mayor Andy Chan, District 134State Rep. Ann Johnson, HCFCD Exec. Director Dr. Tina Petersen
Goals of Renovation
According to the funding request filed by Congresswoman Fletcher, the primary goal of the project is to avoid a failure of the existing channel by constructing an entirely new channel structure in its place.
Channel rehabilitation will reduce flood risk by improving hydraulic capacity. It will also improve HCFCD’s ability to provide maintenance.
The construction project will include maintenance access ramps for HCFCD, and reinforced pavement for inspection and “maintenance by foot” on top of the channel banks.
At the time, HCFCD said it would continue to perform spot repairs and debris clearing as needed.
Then in 2021, the project regained momentum. An engineering study concluded it would be necessary to mitigate the impacts of the proposed Poor-Farm Ditch improvements on Brays Bayou by providing 43 acre feet of stormwater detention along Brays Bayou.
The pictures below illustrate just some of these problems. HCFCD started studying the ditch in 2002. But it has taken until 2023 to raise enough money to address these issues.
Note how close homes and businesses are to the ditch. This turned out to be THE key design constraint. As both Southside and West U policemen told me today, “No one wanted to give up property to improve the ditch.Foliage over the ditch frequently forms log dams that can make flooding worse if not cleared promptly.Aging concrete requires frequent repair but access is poor.
Funding Will Come from Five Different Sources
Funding breaks down as follows:
$5.7 million from the Harris County Flood Control District
$150,000 from the City of Southside Place
$150,000 from the City of West University Place
$16.9 million from State of Texas
$9.9 million from Federal government
That puts the total secured funding at $32.8 million, enough to begin final design, bidding and construction.
Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher secured a huge win in Fiscal Year 2023 when she obtained a $9.9 million earmark.
But according to inside sources, Southside Mayor Chan, working with State Representative Ann Johnson and State Senator Joan Huffman secured the final funding needed for the project – another $16.9 million. Remarkably, the state earmark wasn’t even in the original budget bill this year, but was added during the conference committee phase!
Construction will not likely start until at least next year at the earliest according to Mayor Chan.
During the press conference, participants used the phrase “dogged determination” numerous times. To pull off a project like this requires committed partners to coordinate efforts and pursue funding relentlessly from municipal, county, state and federal governments.
Civic leaders from other areas could learn from this team.
NOAA’s Atlas 14, a massive, years-long effort, which hasn’t even been fully implemented yet, may already be seriously out of date according to First Street.
As a result, First Street claims the design standards for infrastructure projects based on erroneous Atlas-14 data are likely to fail. Trillions of infrastructure investment dollars hang in the balance.
Atlas 14 Probabilities for the North Houston area.
Moreover, for the first time ever, Atlas-15 probabilities will come in two flavors: with and without estimates for the impact of climate change.
First Street Foundation, a non-profit research and technology group, specializes in environmental risk assessment. They position their system, RiskFactor.com, as a stopgap until NOAA releases Atlas 15.
Time Lags Cause Confusion, Create Danger
FEMA still has not released flood maps based on the Atlas-14 probabilities above. The MAAPNext Group within Harris County Flood Control District has been working on those since Harvey. MAAPNext’s latest timeline (below) shows that FEMA may not make Atlas-14-based flood maps official for another 3+ years.
Engineers and government officials use this data when designing new subdivisions, industrial facilities, bridges, highways and other infrastructure.
For instance, they need to know, how high the bridge must be to let water flow under it during a flood to avoid catastrophes like the one below.
Old data led TxDoT to inadequately design the I-69 bridge over the San Jacinto West Fork. Repairs took more than a year after Harvey to complete while residents endured massive traffic jams.
Atlas 15 Underway Before Atlas 14 Implemented
A copyrighted article in the New York Times this morning by Raymond Zhong was titled “Intensifying Rains Pose Hidden Flood Risks Across the U.S.” In it, Mr. Zhong claims that new calculations show hazardous storms can dump significantly more water than previously believed.
“One in nine residents of the lower 48 states, largely in populous regions including the Mid-Atlantic and the Texas Gulf Coast, is at significant risk of downpours that deliver at least 50 percent more rain per hour than local pipes, channels and culverts might be designed to drain,” says Zhong.
Compounding the problem, “NOAA’s estimates are ‘the floor, not a ceiling,'” said Zhong, quoting Abdullah Hasan, a White House spokesman.
“That means millions of homeowners might be making decisions with an incomplete understanding of the true physical and financial risks they face,” said Zhong.
145,000 Houston Homes and Billions in Infrastructure Caught in Time Lag
Zhong quoted First Street Foundation, which said that in Houston alone, as many as 145,000 homes may be in the 100-year flood zone, but that they are not shown that way in current FEMA flood maps.
To put Atlas 15 and its climate change corrections into perspective…
First Street estimates that in Houston, what we currently think of as a 100-year flood may actually be an 8- to 23-year flood.
All this comes as the nation gears up to spend more than $1.2 trillion dollars on infrastructure which Congress and President Biden approved in 2021.
And that $1.2 trillion doesn’t even include the money homebuyers spend each year. About 30% of all household income in the U.S. goes toward housing. And the average American moves once every seven years.
That means virtually everyone is likely not making home-buying decisions based on the most current (accurate) flood probabilities. By the time FEMA releases Harvey-based Atlas-14 flood maps, Atlas-15 revisions will already be available to a select few.
While the Association of State Flood Plain Managers finds First Street data useful, it emailed a report at the close of business today about First Street. The report says that “ASFPM has and will continue to support NOAA’s work on Atlas 14 and 15, which will remain the gold standard within our profession.”
Problems Caused By Lack of Timely Updates
The vast majority of developers, homebuilders and engineers are ethical. But some less scrupulous developers can exploit confusion caused by irregular update policies.
Likewise, engineers who designed a bridge to one set of specs, may find their work out-dated before construction starts. What are the ethical obligations in a case like that?
Just this year, we’ve seen numerous instances of developers trying to get their plans grandfathered under pre-Atlas-14 regulations even as the U.S. moves toward Atlas 15. Little wonder that when a flood happens, few can explain where the system went wrong.
“The fact that the Nation will not have the most accurate estimates of extreme precipitation likelihoods available at the time of the design of these projects means that many of them will be out of date on the day they are opened to the public,” said Matthew Eby, Founder and Executive Director of First Street Foundation.
Governments at all levels need to work better together to shorten the data supply chain. Doing so could save Americans trillions of dollars.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/26/2023
2127 Days since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/I69Damage-e1687824287612.jpg?fit=1100%2C733&ssl=17331100adminadmin2023-06-26 19:14:102023-06-27 14:36:21New Data Suggests Houston’s Expected 100-Year Flood Is More Likely to Happen Every 8 to 23 Years
While speaking to a public meeting of the Harris County Community Flood Resilience Task Force, Scott Elmer, the Flood Control District’s new Chief Partnership and Programs Officer, predicted that some projects in the 2018 flood bond likely will not get done because of a funding gap.
The $825 million is the last large pot of money still sitting on the sidelines from Harvey. But it likely won’t stretch far enough to complete all the projects in the bond.
Despite a partner funding gap of approximately $800 million (published in 2021), the $825 million would only reduce the gap by approximately an estimated $420 million. How could that possibly be? For one thing…
Not all projects proposed to GLO were in the flood bond.
Origins of Funding Gap
To understand the funding gap, one needs to start with the structure of the 2018 flood bond. It contained a list of projects totaling almost $5 billion, but voters approved borrowing only half of that. The other half was supposed to come from partners, such as FEMA, HUD, local governments and the Texas Water Development Board.
Then COVID and inflation struck. Supply chain issues and labor shortages drove up the cost of projects approximately 20-30%, according to Elmer.
Meanwhile, not all of the hoped-for partner funding materialized. For instance, Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) was hoping for a billion dollars from HUD, added Elmer, but received only $825 million. (The County siphoned off almost a quarter billion dollars for Harris County Engineering and Community Services Departments.)
Some Projects Expand While Others May Be Excluded
Complicating the squeeze between the upward pressure of price inflation and less-than-hoped-for funding, HCFCD added (in some cases) to the scope of projects listed in the bond.
For instance, HCFCD originally budgeted the Greens Bayou Mid-Reach Project for $20 million in the bond. But HCFCD lists it at $90 million in the proposed GLO list – a 4.5X increase. The first figure reportedly includes the original phases of the project. The second includes those PLUS others which had been deferred for a subsequent bond.
Another example: The Arbor Oaks Stormwater Detention Basin in the White Oak Bayou watershed started out as a $13.3 million project in the bond, but now weighs in at $42.3 million. Its price more than tripled.
A person familiar with the Arbor Oaks project said it could easily be phased, but that it appears some phases (which had initially been deferred) were now recommended for immediate construction.
Lower part of Arbor Oaks area on bottom left.Bridge is on West Little York. Looking SE toward downtown.
Those two projects alone account for an additional $100 million in scope.
“Use It or Lose It” Deadlines Place Emphasis on Shovel-Ready Projects
The county took 2-years between GLO’s announcement of a $750 million allocation for Harris County and the County’s submission of a plan for spending the money.
Meanwhile, the original HUD deadlines placed on using the money have not slipped. So, HCFCD now has its back up against a “use it or lose it deadline” wall.
If money isn’t spent before HUD deadlines, HUD will take the money back – not just unspent funds, but all funds allocated to incomplete projects. So, say for instance, HCFCD spent $50 million on a project, but had $10 million to go when the deadline arrived. HCFCD would have to give back the $50 million it already spent.
Obviously, the specter of having already-spent funds clawed back by the federal government made “construction readiness” a huge factor in project selection that wasn’t there almost six years ago when Harvey struck.
This means projects given priority by the Equity Prioritization Framework were closer to shovel ready. Presumably, they also helped meet Low-to-Moderate Income (LMI) requirements placed on the HUD funds.
But the competition for those grants is nationwide. They include all states, territories, the District of Columbia and tribal lands. And Texas applications are handicapped because Texas has not updated its building codes in almost a decade to qualify for BRIC funding – despite an 11-to-1 payback.
Updating Project Cost Estimates to Recalculate Funding Gap
Elmer says he cannot calculate an exact funding gap at this time. “We’re still working on updating all project costs with the inflation estimates,” he said.
Elmer hopes to have a firmer estimate by August when the Flood Control District expects to issue its second flood-bond update this year.
I personally hope that the District’s recent reorganization can help it track such financing issues better in the future. It appears that after years of promising residents that all projects in the bond would be completed, now some may not be…while others that were not in the bond will be.
And I suspect I know whose won’t be.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/24/23
2125 Days since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/20220719-RJR_9865.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=18001200adminadmin2023-06-24 19:29:142023-06-25 10:24:52Some Projects in Flood Bond Likely Won’t Get Done While Others Not in Bond Will
Poor-Farm-Ditch Renovation Funding Finally Secured
On 6/28/23, civic leaders from all levels of government gathered to celebrate the acquisition of enough funding to finally begin renovating Poor-Farm Ditch.
Poor-Farm Ditch runs from Greenway Plaza on the north to Brays Bayou on the south between West University Place and South Side Place. Harris County Flood Control District started studying ditch improvements more than 20 years ago. The 70-year-old, crumbling concrete ditch carries stormwater runoff from 1,330 highly developed acres.
Numerous Problems Associated with Poor-Farm Ditch
Poor-Farm Ditch has several problems:
Press Conference Celebrates Funding Success At Long Last
U.S. Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher who secured $9.9 million for the $30+ million project kicked off today’s press conference by thanking all the officials and staff members present.
Goals of Renovation
According to the funding request filed by Congresswoman Fletcher, the primary goal of the project is to avoid a failure of the existing channel by constructing an entirely new channel structure in its place.
Channel rehabilitation will reduce flood risk by improving hydraulic capacity. It will also improve HCFCD’s ability to provide maintenance.
The construction project will include maintenance access ramps for HCFCD, and reinforced pavement for inspection and “maintenance by foot” on top of the channel banks.
In total, the project will benefit 523 structures and 1,036 people.
On-Again, Off-Again Project Finally Finds Funding
As you can see from the pictures below, buildings on the banks of the ditch leave little room for expansion. The project was actually put on hold for two years by Harris County Commissioners Court given lack of funding and lack of consensus support for the improvements among local leaders and residents.
At the time, HCFCD said it would continue to perform spot repairs and debris clearing as needed.
Then in 2021, the project regained momentum. An engineering study concluded it would be necessary to mitigate the impacts of the proposed Poor-Farm Ditch improvements on Brays Bayou by providing 43 acre feet of stormwater detention along Brays Bayou.
The pictures below illustrate just some of these problems. HCFCD started studying the ditch in 2002. But it has taken until 2023 to raise enough money to address these issues.
Funding Will Come from Five Different Sources
Funding breaks down as follows:
That puts the total secured funding at $32.8 million, enough to begin final design, bidding and construction.
Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher secured a huge win in Fiscal Year 2023 when she obtained a $9.9 million earmark.
But according to inside sources, Southside Mayor Chan, working with State Representative Ann Johnson and State Senator Joan Huffman secured the final funding needed for the project – another $16.9 million. Remarkably, the state earmark wasn’t even in the original budget bill this year, but was added during the conference committee phase!
Construction will not likely start until at least next year at the earliest according to Mayor Chan.
During the press conference, participants used the phrase “dogged determination” numerous times. To pull off a project like this requires committed partners to coordinate efforts and pursue funding relentlessly from municipal, county, state and federal governments.
Civic leaders from other areas could learn from this team.
How Ditch Got Its Name
The ditch gets its name from a Poor Farm established by Harris County Commissioners in 1894 in what is now West University Place.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/28/23
2129 Days since Hurricane Harvey
New Data Suggests Houston’s Expected 100-Year Flood Is More Likely to Happen Every 8 to 23 Years
First Street Foundation, a non-profit risk-research group, estimates (based on what it says are “well known” Atlas-14 flaws) that a so-called 100-year flood event in Houston could likely happen every 8 to 23 years.
NOAA’s Atlas 14, a massive, years-long effort, which hasn’t even been fully implemented yet, may already be seriously out of date according to First Street.
As a result, First Street claims the design standards for infrastructure projects based on erroneous Atlas-14 data are likely to fail. Trillions of infrastructure investment dollars hang in the balance.
NOAA Replacing Atlas 14 with Atlas 15 Already
NOAA expects to release its latest Atlas-15 rainfall probability statistics for the U.S. sometime in 2027. Like Atlas 14 below, they will contain probabilities for every location in the country – for durations ranging from 5 minutes to 60 days and recurrence intervals from 1 year to 1000 years.
Moreover, for the first time ever, Atlas-15 probabilities will come in two flavors: with and without estimates for the impact of climate change.
First Street Foundation, a non-profit research and technology group, specializes in environmental risk assessment. They position their system, RiskFactor.com, as a stopgap until NOAA releases Atlas 15.
Time Lags Cause Confusion, Create Danger
FEMA still has not released flood maps based on the Atlas-14 probabilities above. The MAAPNext Group within Harris County Flood Control District has been working on those since Harvey. MAAPNext’s latest timeline (below) shows that FEMA may not make Atlas-14-based flood maps official for another 3+ years.
Engineers and government officials use this data when designing new subdivisions, industrial facilities, bridges, highways and other infrastructure.
For instance, they need to know, how high the bridge must be to let water flow under it during a flood to avoid catastrophes like the one below.
Atlas 15 Underway Before Atlas 14 Implemented
A copyrighted article in the New York Times this morning by Raymond Zhong was titled “Intensifying Rains Pose Hidden Flood Risks Across the U.S.” In it, Mr. Zhong claims that new calculations show hazardous storms can dump significantly more water than previously believed.
“One in nine residents of the lower 48 states, largely in populous regions including the Mid-Atlantic and the Texas Gulf Coast, is at significant risk of downpours that deliver at least 50 percent more rain per hour than local pipes, channels and culverts might be designed to drain,” says Zhong.
Compounding the problem, “NOAA’s estimates are ‘the floor, not a ceiling,'” said Zhong, quoting Abdullah Hasan, a White House spokesman.
“That means millions of homeowners might be making decisions with an incomplete understanding of the true physical and financial risks they face,” said Zhong.
145,000 Houston Homes and Billions in Infrastructure Caught in Time Lag
Zhong quoted First Street Foundation, which said that in Houston alone, as many as 145,000 homes may be in the 100-year flood zone, but that they are not shown that way in current FEMA flood maps.
To put Atlas 15 and its climate change corrections into perspective…
All this comes as the nation gears up to spend more than $1.2 trillion dollars on infrastructure which Congress and President Biden approved in 2021.
And that $1.2 trillion doesn’t even include the money homebuyers spend each year. About 30% of all household income in the U.S. goes toward housing. And the average American moves once every seven years.
That means virtually everyone is likely not making home-buying decisions based on the most current (accurate) flood probabilities. By the time FEMA releases Harvey-based Atlas-14 flood maps, Atlas-15 revisions will already be available to a select few.
While the Association of State Flood Plain Managers finds First Street data useful, it emailed a report at the close of business today about First Street. The report says that “ASFPM has and will continue to support NOAA’s work on Atlas 14 and 15, which will remain the gold standard within our profession.”
Problems Caused By Lack of Timely Updates
The vast majority of developers, homebuilders and engineers are ethical. But some less scrupulous developers can exploit confusion caused by irregular update policies.
Likewise, engineers who designed a bridge to one set of specs, may find their work out-dated before construction starts. What are the ethical obligations in a case like that?
Just this year, we’ve seen numerous instances of developers trying to get their plans grandfathered under pre-Atlas-14 regulations even as the U.S. moves toward Atlas 15. Little wonder that when a flood happens, few can explain where the system went wrong.
“The fact that the Nation will not have the most accurate estimates of extreme precipitation likelihoods available at the time of the design of these projects means that many of them will be out of date on the day they are opened to the public,” said Matthew Eby, Founder and Executive Director of First Street Foundation.
Governments at all levels need to work better together to shorten the data supply chain. Doing so could save Americans trillions of dollars.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/26/2023
2127 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.
Some Projects in Flood Bond Likely Won’t Get Done While Others Not in Bond Will
While speaking to a public meeting of the Harris County Community Flood Resilience Task Force, Scott Elmer, the Flood Control District’s new Chief Partnership and Programs Officer, predicted that some projects in the 2018 flood bond likely will not get done because of a funding gap.
Elmer made this remark while discussing a list of projects proposed by Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) for funding from grants totaling $825 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Texas General Land Office (GLO).
The $825 million is the last large pot of money still sitting on the sidelines from Harvey. But it likely won’t stretch far enough to complete all the projects in the bond.
Despite a partner funding gap of approximately $800 million (published in 2021), the $825 million would only reduce the gap by approximately an estimated $420 million. How could that possibly be? For one thing…
Origins of Funding Gap
To understand the funding gap, one needs to start with the structure of the 2018 flood bond. It contained a list of projects totaling almost $5 billion, but voters approved borrowing only half of that. The other half was supposed to come from partners, such as FEMA, HUD, local governments and the Texas Water Development Board.
Then COVID and inflation struck. Supply chain issues and labor shortages drove up the cost of projects approximately 20-30%, according to Elmer.
Meanwhile, not all of the hoped-for partner funding materialized. For instance, Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) was hoping for a billion dollars from HUD, added Elmer, but received only $825 million. (The County siphoned off almost a quarter billion dollars for Harris County Engineering and Community Services Departments.)
Some Projects Expand While Others May Be Excluded
Complicating the squeeze between the upward pressure of price inflation and less-than-hoped-for funding, HCFCD added (in some cases) to the scope of projects listed in the bond.
A person familiar with the Arbor Oaks project said it could easily be phased, but that it appears some phases (which had initially been deferred) were now recommended for immediate construction.
Those two projects alone account for an additional $100 million in scope.
“Use It or Lose It” Deadlines Place Emphasis on Shovel-Ready Projects
The projects recommended on the GLO list largely came from projects which had already been extensively studied and which are near shovel ready. That’s primarily because of two factors:
If money isn’t spent before HUD deadlines, HUD will take the money back – not just unspent funds, but all funds allocated to incomplete projects. So, say for instance, HCFCD spent $50 million on a project, but had $10 million to go when the deadline arrived. HCFCD would have to give back the $50 million it already spent.
Obviously, the specter of having already-spent funds clawed back by the federal government made “construction readiness” a huge factor in project selection that wasn’t there almost six years ago when Harvey struck.
This means projects given priority by the Equity Prioritization Framework were closer to shovel ready. Presumably, they also helped meet Low-to-Moderate Income (LMI) requirements placed on the HUD funds.
No other large pots of aid dedicated to Harvey remain out there. So, annual programs, such as FEMA’s Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA) and Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) represent HCFCD’s best hope to make up the rest of the funding gap.
But the competition for those grants is nationwide. They include all states, territories, the District of Columbia and tribal lands. And Texas applications are handicapped because Texas has not updated its building codes in almost a decade to qualify for BRIC funding – despite an 11-to-1 payback.
Updating Project Cost Estimates to Recalculate Funding Gap
Elmer says he cannot calculate an exact funding gap at this time. “We’re still working on updating all project costs with the inflation estimates,” he said.
Elmer hopes to have a firmer estimate by August when the Flood Control District expects to issue its second flood-bond update this year.
I personally hope that the District’s recent reorganization can help it track such financing issues better in the future. It appears that after years of promising residents that all projects in the bond would be completed, now some may not be…while others that were not in the bond will be.
And I suspect I know whose won’t be.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/24/23
2125 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.