News - Reduce Flooding

Woodridge Village Turns Into Beehive of Construction Activity

Last year, overland sheet flow from Perry Homes’ Woodridge Village contributed to flooding hundreds of homes in Elm Grove and North Kingwood Forest twice. Construction slowed last fall, but has now turned into a beehive of activity. Just days before a deadline for a deal with the Harris County and the City of Houston to buy the property. Yesterday, dozens of pieces of heavy equipment swarmed over the northern section.

Visible Changes Since April 21st Flyover

Since my April 21st flyover:

Excavation of the N1 detention pond started
Excavation of the N2 detention pond continues.
N3 is surprisingly far along, perhaps 30-50% complete
Contractors are filling in wetlands and bogs with dirt excavated from detention ponds
They are building a concrete pilot channel down the east/west portion of Taylor Gulley
And they appear to be blocking out some roads.

These construction crews appear to have completed more work in the last month than the original contractors did in the last year.

Purchase Deal Faces May 15 Deadline

Perry originally set a May 15 deadline for a City/County commitment to purchase the property. Perry said that if they didn’t receive a commitment by then, they would continue to develop the Woodridge Village property and to try to sell it on the private market.

When Harris County commissioners last met, they put two conditions on a purchase:

That the cash-poor City of Houston donate land worth $7 million (half the purchase price) to Harris County Flood Control District, to help defray the cost of other other flood-mitigation projects.
That the City of Houston adopt NOAA’s latest Atlas 14 precipitation frequency estimates.

Sources close to the deal believe that if Perry Homes gets a firm commitment by the 15th, that will keep negotiations open.

However, the last City Council meeting before the deadline starts this afternoon (May 12). Donation of land to Harris County Flood Control is not on the agenda. Neither is an Atlas-14 resolution.

Harris County Commissioners Court publishes the agenda this Friday for their Tuesday, May 19th meeting.

Pictures of Work in Progress as of 5/11/2020

Below are pictures of the Woodridge Village work in progress. All were taken on 5/11/2020. It certainly appears as though Perry Homes is hedging its bets in case the City and County don’t come through with an offer. For orientation purposes, the first image shows where detention ponds go.

*Location of detention ponds* *within Perry Homes’ property.*

*Looking south along the eastern property line of Woodridge Village at excavation of the N3 detention pond.*

*Looking southeast from the northwest corner of Woodridge near the Webb Street entrance. Shows initial work on the N2 pond.*

*Looking southeast. Activity is where Mace Street extension into Woodridge Village would go.*

*Filling in the bog adjacent to Woodland Hills. Note mud on left side of photo.*

*Looking north from SW corner. S1 is in foreground. S2 is in upper right. N2 is triangular area in upper left.*

*A tighter shot looking north along western boundary with N2 in foregroundyou can see three distinct zones of activity.*

*Hovering over Village Springs in Elm Grove, looking north along eastern property boundary. S2 is in middle and N3 is taking shape above that.*

*Where Taylor Gully makes a turn north of S2, contractors are installing a concrete pilot channel.*

*Looking NW across northern section. Taylor Gully is on bottom left. S2 on upper right. Dirt excavated from various ponds is being used to fill in wetlands, center.*

*Middle of eastern boundary, excavation work continues on N3 and a channel that will lead down to Taylor Gully.*

After months of foot dragging, construction activity at Woodridge is now in high gear. Perry Homes says it expects to finish work on the detention ponds sometime this summer.

Sale or no sale, that’s good. Hurricane season is just a little more than two weeks away. These ponds won’t be fully functional by then, but every little bit helps.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 5/12/2020

987 Days since Hurricane Harvey and 236 since Imelda

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.

Abandoned Sand Mines Leave Lasting Legacy of Loss in Southeast Texas

More than a decade after one San Jacinto West Fork sand mine stopped mining, the abandoned mine is still:

Inundated by floods
Leaking silty water into the river from multiple locations
Littered with mining debris
Unrestored.

That Was The Good News

Worse, it has little hope of ever being restored. The West Fork has captured one of the mine’s main pits as predicted two years ago. Now, process wastewater leaks from an upstream mine into the abandoned mine, and from there, into the river.

TACA fondly says that mines CAN be repurposed into lakes that make recreational amenities for residential developments. That’s true. If miners cared. If someone was watching. And if we had regulations that forced reclamation.

Last week, I published a story about an abandoned Texas Concrete Plum Grove plant on the East Fork. Today, I focus on a West Fork mine that used to be operated by River Aggregates as the Porter Sand and Gravel Plant. See below.

Landsat image from 10/28/2017. Comparison of this satellite image and the one below, both from Google Earth, shows that the area inside the large red circle was a settling pond in danger of being captured by the river. And it was. *See below.*

*Google Earth image from 12/1/2019*, *thirteen months later. Mine is outlined in red. Circles represent breaches that I will discuss below.* *New development on right is Northpark Woods.*

The mine in question lies between Sorters-McClellan Road and the West Fork, and just north of the Northpark drainage ditch. It sits immediately west of the new Northpark Woods subdivision. The last image in Google Earth that shows active mining was dated 2008.

Current Images Show Lasting Leaks

*Looking southeast. Both ends of the main pond (adjacent to the Hallett mine) have sprouted leaks. This is on the northwest side of the mine.* *Photo taken 4/21/2019.*

*Looking southwest. The Hallett Mine, above the mine in satellite photos above, is almost overflowing in this image taken on 4/21/2019. It sometimes does overflow. See below.*

*Looking northeast. Top circle shows where the Hallett Mine sometimes leaks into the mine in question. Bottom circle shows where the second mine then leaks into the West Fork (in the right foreground).* *Photo taken 4/21/2019.*

*At the other (southeastern) end of the same pond, river migration cut into the wall that separated the mine from the West Fork. The pond now constantly leaks into the West Fork.* *Photo taken 4/21/2019.*

Here’s how it looks from the reverse angle. Looking east toward Northpark Woods development in upper right next to Northpark Drainage Ditch *Photo taken 4/21/2019.* *Compare this with the photo below.*

River Migration Led to Transformation

On September 14, 2017, I photographed the same mine from the same angle. Here’s how it looked then. Note that a narrow strip of land only a few feet wide separated the mine from the river at that time.

As the images above show, sometime between 10/28/2017 and 12/1/2019, the West Fork migrated into the mine’s settling pond. The breach then allowed the mine’s wastewater and wastewater from surrounding ponds to drain into the West Fork.

In 2018, on the first anniversary of Hurricane Harvey, I discussed the mine above in a post about river migration. The post said, “At the current rate, without human intervention, river migration should capture the mine … in about three years.” It took less than that.

The owner of this land, Hannover Estates, sold the part on higher ground to a Colorado developer that is now building Northpark Woods.

Abandoned Mine Creates Lasting Legacy of Loss

The abandoned mine will not be much of an amenity for buyers in Northpark Woods. The forests and wetlands that once made this area such an ecologically rich place to explore are gone forever. So are the deer and the fish.

But downstream residents have it worse. They receive all the sediment flowing out of such mines and clogging the river. They must spend hundreds of millions of dollars to restore conveyance of the river so their homes and businesses don’t flood.

As a final insult, Montgomery County collects only about $12.50 per acre per year in tax on this barren 173-acre plot of land.

Lessons from Loss

There are two lessons to take away from this and other abandoned mines. We need legislation that mandates:

Greater setbacks from rivers for mines. Get them out of the meander belt.
Posting of performance bonds the guarantee reclamation before miners start mining.

Miners can and do sometimes simply ignore the promises they made to restore the land before they got their permit to start mining. When they do, they leave us with a barren moonscape. Littered with craters. And a lasting legacy of loss.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 5/11/2020

986 Days after 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.

HCFCD Finishes Clean-Out of Its Portion of Rogers Gully; But Mouth Bar Remains

Aerial photos taken on April 21, 2020 show that Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) finished its Rogers Gully project in the Walden area of Lake Houston south of FM1960. However, a significant mouth bar remains in the portion of the ditch owned by the City of Houston.

*Looking west from shoreline of Lake Houston. Harris County Flood Control excavated accumulated sediment earlier this year in the visible portions of Rogers Gully.*

*Looking east from same position, shows work still remains in the City-owned portion of Rogers Gully.*

Project Did Not Extend to Lake Houston

The channel repair project extended from Trophy Place to approximately 1,400 feet downstream. Matt Zeve, Deputy Executive Director of HCFCD, said “We had worked this location a year ago, and the sediment accumulated in this spot again very quickly, so we had to come back.”

However, he added, “We won’t be getting the mouth bar.” The mouth bar is yet another one of the jurisdictional issues that plague homeowners around Lake Houston. The map below shows the HCFCD right-of-way in yellow. City of Houston (COH) is the red (actually COH owns all of the lake area even though it doesn’t show up on the map).

*HCFCD excavated the yellow portion of Rogers Gully.*

Zeve also said, “The mouth bar will have to be handled by another dredging contract that will come after the COH executes the $30 million program.” The $30 million program refers to the Huberty Amendment to SB500 passed during the last legislature.

The April photo of the mouth bar above was taken after a large rain when the lake level was up slightly. When the level is down, here is what the problem looks like.

Still shot from Jack and Greg Toole’s video. Used with permission.

The Rogers Gully mouth bar still appears to have the potential to back water up and contribute to neighborhood flooding.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 5/10/2020

985 Days after Hurricane Harvey and 234 after Imelda