Since 2000, Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) and its partners have spent more than a half billion dollars to reduce flooding in the White Oak Bayou watershed. And they aren’t done yet. Before the flood bond is complete, they will have spent at least $575 million to create detention basins, widen channels and make other improvements.
On 7/19/2022, I flew up White Oak Bayou in a helicopter with Bill Calligari and Ken Williams, two fellow members from the Harris County Community Flood Resilience Task Force. Our goal: to learn what the money bought.
This is the second of four posts. The first covered Greens Bayou. The next two will cover Hunting and Halls Bayous.
White Oak Bayou by the Numbers
White Oak Bayou is Harris County’s sixth largest watershed but its third most populous. 51% of its residents qualify as Low-to-Moderate Income (LMI). It’s our fourth most densely populated watershed (people/square mile). Not surprisingly it had the third most damage in 5 major storms since 2000 (Allison, Tax Day, Memorial Day, Harvey, Imelda). The storms damaged 25,739 structures. Look at some of the photos below of structures crowding the bayou and you will understand why.
White Oak Bayou from the Air
White Oak Bayou flows southeast from its headwaters northwest of FM 1960 to its confluence with Buffalo Bayou near downtown Houston. The watershed comprises 111 square miles, with 146 miles of open streams. They include:
White Oak Bayou
Little White Oak Bayou
Brickhouse Gully
Cole Creek
Vogel Creek
Our helicopter started the White Oak leg of our flight near the Heights north of downtown. From there, we flew upstream. This is what the Heights looks like from the air – a study in population density which correlates highly with flood damage.
White Oak drains most of the Heights. Note the density of development. In 2010, the watershed census was 433,250. But by 2020, it had increased to 464,933.
Looking south toward downtown from over Ella and TC Jester. Most of this segment of the bayou was finished years ago and requires only repairs now.Looking W, upstream from over West 34th and TC Jester.
HCFCD now maintains White Oak and has observed a number of locations where concrete is approaching the end of its useful life.
Looking upstream from over Garapan Street just north of Tidwell at bank and concrete repairs.(Arbor Oaks buyout area is in upper right. See end of post.)
Some projects are still being studied. Some are complete or nearly so. As of June 8, 2022, HCFCD was working out a contractor issue on the largest project, which will delay the originally scheduled completion this summer.
Federal Flood Damage Reduction Project
The largest project is the White Oak Bayou Federal Flood Damage Reduction Project. This $124 million project will substantially reduce flooding risks along White Oak Bayou. It started in 1998 in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, with the Flood Control District designated as the lead. The two segments of the project are fully funded to completion.
Upstream segment of Federal Project.
Limits of downstream segment of Federal Project
They include:
Construction of approximately 15.4 miles of channel conveyance improvements along the bayou from FM 1960 to Cole Creek near West Tidwell in the two segments above.
Excavation of six stormwater detention basins to hold almost one billion gallons of stormwater. That’s enough to hold a foot of rain falling across almost 5 square miles.
Construction of the Jersey Village Bypass Channel
Stretch of improvements upstream from Alabonson Road.
Upon completion, HCFCD estimates that most parts of the project area will see water surface elevation reductions of 0.1 to 1.8 feet for a 1 percent annual chance (100-year) flooding event.
HCFCD
Looking S.White Oak Bayou Detention Basin near West Little York and Hollister.Looking S toward White Oak Bayou near Fairbanks North Houston Rd. Basin completed in 2021A smaller detention basin opposite the one above skirts the south side of White Oak at Fairbanks North Houston (bottom right).Channel improvements and greenbelt trail still under construction.Looking west at White Oak where it crosses under Beltway 8. Note bridge improvements and vegetated detention ponds on left on both sides of bayou.
Many smaller detention ponds like those above now line both sides of the bayou and its tributaries from upstream to down.
Arbor Oaks Subdivision Buyout
Since 2003, HCFCD has bought out more than 200 homes in the Arbor Oaks subdivision. It is still buying more on either side of Vogel Creek to build a 431 acre-foot stormwater detention basin and restore the floodplain. That would hold a foot of rain falling over 2/3rds of a square mile.
Acquisition costs in such densely populated neighborhoods can easily exceed construction costs.
This part of the White Oak story dramatizes how costly, difficult and time-consuming it can be to buy out and mitigate areas built in floodplains.
Note the large areas with streets marked, but few or no homes on them. They were bought out and this area will become another large detention basin. Image courtesy of Apple Maps.
Here’s what part of it looks like from a few hundred feet up.
Lower part of Arbor Oaks area on bottom left.Bridge is on West Little York. Looking SE toward downtown.Looking SE at floodplain south of Little York near Arbor Oaks. Note aging concrete along White Oak Bayou on right.
And then there’s the North Canal near downtown. HCFCD and the City of Houston are working to finalize an interlocal agreement. Grant funding calls for completion of the first phase of the project by May 2023.
They all add up to more than a half billion dollars…and counting! Water needs somewhere to go during a storm. If we don’t leave a floodplain for floodwaters to safely expand, they will wind up in peoples’ living rooms.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/20/2022
1786 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/20220719-RJR_9908.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=18001200adminadmin2022-07-20 20:54:042022-08-29 14:45:27White Oak Bayou: What A Half Billion Dollars Looks Like
Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) and its partners continue to add detention basin capacity along Greens Bayou to reduce the risk of flooding. I flew in a helicopter today with fellow Harris County Community Flood Resilience Task Force members Ken Willians and Bill Calligari. We flew over Greens, Halls, Hunting, and White Oak Bayous. In this post, let’s focus on what we found in Greens.
From west to east, we flew over the Cutten Basin at 249 and Beltway 8, then followed the bayou over the Antoine, Kuykendahl, Glen Forest, Aldine-Westfield, and Lauder Basins. Some have recently completed construction. Others are still under construction. Here’s a rundown of everything between US249 and US59 along Greens.
Cutten Basin
Scheduled for completion later this year, the Cutten Basin covers approximately 250 acres. It includes five compartments, four south of Greens Bayou and one north. When complete, it will hold 850 acre feet of stormwater. That’s enough to hold a foot of rain falling across approximately 1.3 square miles. It will lower the water surface elevation along Greens by a third of a foot in a hundred-year flood.
Looking S toward Beltway 8. Greens Bayou flows from right to left through the center of the frame. Looking East. Greens cuts through the upper left portion of the frame. Beltway 8 cuts through the upper right.Looking West across Hollister which cuts through the middle of the frame.
Antoine Basin
HCFCD and the Army Corps started the $80 million Antoine Basin in 2015. The Army Corps designed and built it. Satellite photos in Google Earth first show it holding water in November 2020.
Looking east along Greens toward the Antoine Basin, top right.Looking SW. West Greens Road arcs through center of frame. Greens flows from upper right to lower left. Beltway 8 near top of frame.
The completed basin holds approximately 1,650 acre-feet, or 538 million gallons of stormwater. To put that in perspective, it holds a foot of rain falling over a 2.5 square mile area, or half a foot falling across 5 square miles!
Kuykendahl Basin
Kuykendahl Stormwater Detention Basin sits on a 288-acre property near Kuykendahl Road and Ella Boulevard along an unnamed tributary of Greens Bayou. In floods, it holds water back from entering the bayou and then releases it safely and slowly after the storm has passed.
Wide shot of Kuykendahl Basin looking westKuykendahl in foreground. Note how densely populated the area is with apartments.
Contractors removed 3.61 million cubic yards of soil from the site. It holds 2,325 acre-feet, or 757.6 million gallons of stormwater. That’s a foot of rain falling across 3.6 square miles, or half a foot falling across 7.2.
Following construction, contractors planted 22.19 acres of native tree and shrubs, and 12.79 acres of stormwater quality-treatment wetlands. They also created 14.04 acres of other wetlands to replace those impacted by construction.
Ceres Environmental Services Inc. constructed the Kuykendahl basin and another to the east (see Glen Forest below). Combined, they were the largest construction contract ever managed by HCFCD up to that time. The two basins reduced or removed flooding risks and damages from more than 1,100 structures along Greens Bayou. “Avoided damages” exceed $90 million in every flood. Far more than the cost of construction.
FEMA awarded $39.2 million to the Harris County Flood Control District, under the Hurricane Ike Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) to construct the basins and HCFCD contributed matching funds.
Google Earth satellite photos indicate construction finished for both basins in 2020.
Glen Forest
Farther east along Greens, the Glen Forest Detention Basin extends from I-45 to Imperial Valley north of Greens Road.
Looking East across I-45 at Glen Forest Basin.Looking West at Glen Forest Basin on Greens Bayou between I-45 at top of frame and Imperial Valley Drive under camera position.
The Glen Forest Basin project removed approximately 2.15 million cubic yards of soil in three connected cells. The completed basin holds approximately 894 acre-feet. That’s 1.4 square miles one foot deep or 2.8 square miles a half foot deep.
Aldine Westfield Basins: Phases 1 and 2
Farther east along Greens Bayou, directly south of Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport, you will find two more new basins. HCFCD completed construction on the first in April 2021. The second (to the north) then began construction and has not yet finished.
Looking East from over Aldine Westfield Road in foreground at Phase One. Beltway 8 in upper right. Note Greens Bayou turning south under Beltway in upper right.Looking ENE. Phase 2 is still under construction on Aldine-Westfield Road immediately north of Phase 1 (lower right). Note airport tower on horizon.
The two basins when complete in 2024 will hold a foot of rain falling over more than 2 square miles (1260 acre feet). That concludes your helicopter flight down Greens Bayou for today.
Greens by the Numbers
Together, these basins should hold approximately a foot of rain falling over 12 square miles.
That’s not enough to prevent flooding in another Harvey. But it will certainly reduce flooding for thousands of people. HCFCD has not yet released updated flood-risk data for the mid- and upper reaches of Greens Bayou (shown above). More news on that when it becomes available.
According to data obtained from HCFCD via a FOIA Request, Flood Control and its partners have spent more than $435 million on flood mitigation in Greens Bayou between 1/1/2000 and the end of last year. That includes money spent on all phases of all projects shown above.
Only three other watersheds have received more funding since 2000: Brays, White Oak and Sims. But more on those later.
Greens was the second most heavily damaged watershed in five major storms (Allison, Tax Day, Memorial Day, Harvey, Imelda). Those storms damaged more than 29,000 Greens structures.
58% of the population of Greens has low-to-moderate income (LMI). That ranks 6th on the LMI scale of Harris County watersheds.
This morning at 10:34 AM, the last remains of another Forest Cove townhome complex toppled to the ground. The HCFCD demolition contractor nibbled away at it last week and earlier this morning. Eventually, all but a narrow strip of the last townhome in the complex had turned into a pile of rubble.
That strip started to lean. Then, suddenly, one more touch from the excavator, and the building collapsed on itself with a billowing cloud of dust and a thunderous boom. When the dust cleared, only one last complex remained standing.
As of Saturday, 7/16/22, one of the last three buildings was completely gone along with half of the second.Early Monday, 7/18/22, demolition of the remaining portion of the second building started again.As the excavator clawed away at the building, it started to lean.Periodically, the excavator would pile more rubble under itself so it could then reach higher. Note falling doors, walls and floors, frozen in space by the camera’s fast shutter speed.What took months to build came down in seconds.Note the severe bowing of the wallon the right.
Final Collapse Caught on Camera
At this point, I sensed the building would soon collapse. So, I switched from the drone to my Nikon which can shoot many more frames per second. And then it started…
With parts of the second and third floors removed, along with most of the truss structure in the attic, the remainder of the building started to collapse in on itself.A chimney came tumbling forward.The final collapse took less than 10 seconds. Three minutes later, the dust had cleared.
Next Steps
Contractors will extract any recyclable waste from the rubble. Then, they will crush what remains so that it takes less space in a landfill. Finally, they will remove the concrete from the foundation and likely recycle that, too.
Eventually, this area will return to nature. However, what form that takes has not yet been determined. Typically, HCFCD partners with other organizations such as the Houston Parks Board to create and maintain improvements such as trails, parks or recreational space. In fact, the Houston Parks Board West Fork Trail currently ends behind the rubble in the photo above. The Parks Board plans to extend it to Edgewater Park at US59, so hikers and bikers can connect from the Kingwood Trail System to the Spring Creek Greenway.
Demo Date for Last Building
After this morning, only one Forest Cove townhome complex remains standing. That’s at 1020 Marina Drive near the community swimming pool. According to Amy Stone, a Flood Control District spokesperson, HCFCD will demolish that building starting August 1, 2022. More news to follow.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/18/2022
1784 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/20220718-DJI_0249.jpg?fit=1200%2C799&ssl=17991200adminadmin2022-07-18 13:22:152022-07-18 14:54:27Caught on Camera: Moment Forest Cove Townhome Toppled
White Oak Bayou: What A Half Billion Dollars Looks Like
Since 2000, Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) and its partners have spent more than a half billion dollars to reduce flooding in the White Oak Bayou watershed. And they aren’t done yet. Before the flood bond is complete, they will have spent at least $575 million to create detention basins, widen channels and make other improvements.
On 7/19/2022, I flew up White Oak Bayou in a helicopter with Bill Calligari and Ken Williams, two fellow members from the Harris County Community Flood Resilience Task Force. Our goal: to learn what the money bought.
This is the second of four posts. The first covered Greens Bayou. The next two will cover Hunting and Halls Bayous.
White Oak Bayou by the Numbers
White Oak Bayou is Harris County’s sixth largest watershed but its third most populous. 51% of its residents qualify as Low-to-Moderate Income (LMI). It’s our fourth most densely populated watershed (people/square mile). Not surprisingly it had the third most damage in 5 major storms since 2000 (Allison, Tax Day, Memorial Day, Harvey, Imelda). The storms damaged 25,739 structures. Look at some of the photos below of structures crowding the bayou and you will understand why.
White Oak Bayou from the Air
White Oak Bayou flows southeast from its headwaters northwest of FM 1960 to its confluence with Buffalo Bayou near downtown Houston. The watershed comprises 111 square miles, with 146 miles of open streams. They include:
Our helicopter started the White Oak leg of our flight near the Heights north of downtown. From there, we flew upstream. This is what the Heights looks like from the air – a study in population density which correlates highly with flood damage.
The lower section of the bayou needs repairs according to HCFCD. The Army Corps straightened, widened and partially concreted lower White Oak upstream approximately to West Tidwell Road between 1964 and 1971. See below.
HCFCD now maintains White Oak and has observed a number of locations where concrete is approaching the end of its useful life.
16 Other Projects in Works
HCFCD currently lists 16 other projects in the White Oak watershed.
Some projects are still being studied. Some are complete or nearly so. As of June 8, 2022, HCFCD was working out a contractor issue on the largest project, which will delay the originally scheduled completion this summer.
Federal Flood Damage Reduction Project
The largest project is the White Oak Bayou Federal Flood Damage Reduction Project. This $124 million project will substantially reduce flooding risks along White Oak Bayou. It started in 1998 in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, with the Flood Control District designated as the lead. The two segments of the project are fully funded to completion.
Limits of downstream segment of Federal Project
They include:
Many smaller detention ponds like those above now line both sides of the bayou and its tributaries from upstream to down.
Arbor Oaks Subdivision Buyout
Since 2003, HCFCD has bought out more than 200 homes in the Arbor Oaks subdivision. It is still buying more on either side of Vogel Creek to build a 431 acre-foot stormwater detention basin and restore the floodplain. That would hold a foot of rain falling over 2/3rds of a square mile.
Acquisition costs in such densely populated neighborhoods can easily exceed construction costs.
Here’s what part of it looks like from a few hundred feet up.
Many Other Projects
There are so many other projects underway on White Oak that I scarcely have room to mention them. See my previous post that discusses conversion of the Inwood Golf Course to a series of 12 connected detention ponds. It will hold 1200 acre feet. That’s a foot of rain falling over 2 square miles.
Then there’s the Woodland Trails Detention project downstream from Fairbanks N. Houston Road. It’s budgeted at $63.5 million. But it’s still in right-of-way acquisition.
And then there’s the North Canal near downtown. HCFCD and the City of Houston are working to finalize an interlocal agreement. Grant funding calls for completion of the first phase of the project by May 2023.
Finally, don’t forget the detention basins and channel conveyance improvements on tributaries, such as Little White Oak Bayou and Brickhouse Gully.
They all add up to more than a half billion dollars…and counting! Water needs somewhere to go during a storm. If we don’t leave a floodplain for floodwaters to safely expand, they will wind up in peoples’ living rooms.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/20/2022
1786 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Greens Bayou Detention Basin Capacity Steadily Growing
Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) and its partners continue to add detention basin capacity along Greens Bayou to reduce the risk of flooding. I flew in a helicopter today with fellow Harris County Community Flood Resilience Task Force members Ken Willians and Bill Calligari. We flew over Greens, Halls, Hunting, and White Oak Bayous. In this post, let’s focus on what we found in Greens.
From west to east, we flew over the Cutten Basin at 249 and Beltway 8, then followed the bayou over the Antoine, Kuykendahl, Glen Forest, Aldine-Westfield, and Lauder Basins. Some have recently completed construction. Others are still under construction. Here’s a rundown of everything between US249 and US59 along Greens.
Cutten Basin
Scheduled for completion later this year, the Cutten Basin covers approximately 250 acres. It includes five compartments, four south of Greens Bayou and one north. When complete, it will hold 850 acre feet of stormwater. That’s enough to hold a foot of rain falling across approximately 1.3 square miles. It will lower the water surface elevation along Greens by a third of a foot in a hundred-year flood.
Antoine Basin
HCFCD and the Army Corps started the $80 million Antoine Basin in 2015. The Army Corps designed and built it. Satellite photos in Google Earth first show it holding water in November 2020.
The completed basin holds approximately 1,650 acre-feet, or 538 million gallons of stormwater. To put that in perspective, it holds a foot of rain falling over a 2.5 square mile area, or half a foot falling across 5 square miles!
Kuykendahl Basin
Kuykendahl Stormwater Detention Basin sits on a 288-acre property near Kuykendahl Road and Ella Boulevard along an unnamed tributary of Greens Bayou. In floods, it holds water back from entering the bayou and then releases it safely and slowly after the storm has passed.
Contractors removed 3.61 million cubic yards of soil from the site. It holds 2,325 acre-feet, or 757.6 million gallons of stormwater. That’s a foot of rain falling across 3.6 square miles, or half a foot falling across 7.2.
Following construction, contractors planted 22.19 acres of native tree and shrubs, and 12.79 acres of stormwater quality-treatment wetlands. They also created 14.04 acres of other wetlands to replace those impacted by construction.
Ceres Environmental Services Inc. constructed the Kuykendahl basin and another to the east (see Glen Forest below). Combined, they were the largest construction contract ever managed by HCFCD up to that time. The two basins reduced or removed flooding risks and damages from more than 1,100 structures along Greens Bayou. “Avoided damages” exceed $90 million in every flood. Far more than the cost of construction.
FEMA awarded $39.2 million to the Harris County Flood Control District, under the Hurricane Ike Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) to construct the basins and HCFCD contributed matching funds.
Google Earth satellite photos indicate construction finished for both basins in 2020.
Glen Forest
Farther east along Greens, the Glen Forest Detention Basin extends from I-45 to Imperial Valley north of Greens Road.
The Glen Forest Basin project removed approximately 2.15 million cubic yards of soil in three connected cells. The completed basin holds approximately 894 acre-feet. That’s 1.4 square miles one foot deep or 2.8 square miles a half foot deep.
Aldine Westfield Basins: Phases 1 and 2
Farther east along Greens Bayou, directly south of Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport, you will find two more new basins. HCFCD completed construction on the first in April 2021. The second (to the north) then began construction and has not yet finished.
Phase 1 holds approximately 667 acre-feet of stormwater and Phase II will hold another 600 acre-feet. Two 5’x4′ reinforced concrete boxes will connect the two phases and outfalls into Greens Bayou.
Together the two basins will hold a foot of rain falling over more than two square miles.
Lauder Basin
1.5 miles to south of the Aldine-Westfield Basins, you will find the Lauder Basin: Phases 1 and 2.
Phase 2 of the Lauder Basin is starting in the forested area in the upper right of the photo above.
Phase 1 completed construction late last year. In May of 2022, the Texas Water Development Board granted HCFCD more than $2.2 million to begin Phase 2.
The two basins when complete in 2024 will hold a foot of rain falling over more than 2 square miles (1260 acre feet). That concludes your helicopter flight down Greens Bayou for today.
Greens by the Numbers
Together, these basins should hold approximately a foot of rain falling over 12 square miles.
That’s not enough to prevent flooding in another Harvey. But it will certainly reduce flooding for thousands of people. HCFCD has not yet released updated flood-risk data for the mid- and upper reaches of Greens Bayou (shown above). More news on that when it becomes available.
According to data obtained from HCFCD via a FOIA Request, Flood Control and its partners have spent more than $435 million on flood mitigation in Greens Bayou between 1/1/2000 and the end of last year. That includes money spent on all phases of all projects shown above.
Only three other watersheds have received more funding since 2000: Brays, White Oak and Sims. But more on those later.
Greens was the second most heavily damaged watershed in five major storms (Allison, Tax Day, Memorial Day, Harvey, Imelda). Those storms damaged more than 29,000 Greens structures.
58% of the population of Greens has low-to-moderate income (LMI). That ranks 6th on the LMI scale of Harris County watersheds.
Posted Bob Rehak on 7/19/22
1785 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Caught on Camera: Moment Forest Cove Townhome Toppled
This morning at 10:34 AM, the last remains of another Forest Cove townhome complex toppled to the ground. The HCFCD demolition contractor nibbled away at it last week and earlier this morning. Eventually, all but a narrow strip of the last townhome in the complex had turned into a pile of rubble.
That strip started to lean. Then, suddenly, one more touch from the excavator, and the building collapsed on itself with a billowing cloud of dust and a thunderous boom. When the dust cleared, only one last complex remained standing.
We are nearing the end of a process that started in 2018.
Sequence of Photos
Final Collapse Caught on Camera
At this point, I sensed the building would soon collapse. So, I switched from the drone to my Nikon which can shoot many more frames per second. And then it started…
Next Steps
Contractors will extract any recyclable waste from the rubble. Then, they will crush what remains so that it takes less space in a landfill. Finally, they will remove the concrete from the foundation and likely recycle that, too.
Eventually, this area will return to nature. However, what form that takes has not yet been determined. Typically, HCFCD partners with other organizations such as the Houston Parks Board to create and maintain improvements such as trails, parks or recreational space. In fact, the Houston Parks Board West Fork Trail currently ends behind the rubble in the photo above. The Parks Board plans to extend it to Edgewater Park at US59, so hikers and bikers can connect from the Kingwood Trail System to the Spring Creek Greenway.
Demo Date for Last Building
After this morning, only one Forest Cove townhome complex remains standing. That’s at 1020 Marina Drive near the community swimming pool. According to Amy Stone, a Flood Control District spokesperson, HCFCD will demolish that building starting August 1, 2022. More news to follow.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/18/2022
1784 Days since Hurricane Harvey