In the last month, workers made progress on pipeline bed repairs to two area sand mines. But repairs at one sand mine look substantial. At another, they look superficial. Triple PG in Porter is still edging into the danger zone.
Exposed by Erosion When Mining Came Too Close
In December and January, I posted about pipelines exposed when sand miners mined too close to them. Floodwaters then swept through the mines and undercut the pipelines, creating safety hazards.
Pipelines exposed by erosion at Liberty Materials Mine in Conroe. Photo taken January 20, 2020.
Several HVL (highly volatile liquid) pipelines (above) and one natural gas pipeline (below) were affected at mines in Conroe and Porter.
Exposed natural gas pipeline at Triple PG mine near Caney Creek in Porter. Photo taken December 3, 2019.
Here’s where things stand on repairs at both mines as of last week..
Triple PG Mine in Porter: Another Big Cover Up
The Triple PG Mine in Porter has covered up the exposed natural gas pipeline with sand. As of 2/13/2020, Triple PG had made no other visible attempts to stabilize the area, which is subject to repeated erosion. Harvey first exposed the pipeline, which Triple PG subsequently covered. Then Imelda re-exposed it. And Triple PG re-covered it.
Fresh sand covers exposed natural gas pipeline. Will it be washed away a third time in the next big storm?
Readers may remember that after Harvey, Kinder Morgan tunneled 75 feet under the mine and spliced in a replacement for the section that had been exposed. They then filled the cutoff section with inert gas. So the exposed section was not active.
Still, without further stabilization, the pipeline will likely be exposed again and again by future storms.
Triple PG still has made no attempt to stabilize erosion creeping toward the HVL pipelines that cross the mine in a utility corridor. The same erosion that exposed the natural gas pipeline will threaten those in future storms.
Five pipelines carry highly volatile liquids through this utility corridor. Triple PG mines sand from either side of them. During floods, Caney Creek runs through this mine creating the erosion you see here.
Liberty Materials Mine in Conroe: Fix Nearing Completion
At a Liberty Materials Mine in Conroe, a much more substantial fix is underway by the pipelines. The mine spanned both sides of the utility corridor. Water from one side, trying to get to the river on the other, washed under several HVL pipelines, exposing them.
Repairs began in January and were well under way in February. Crews first expanded the washed out area under the pipelines. Then they placed two giant culverts under the pipelines to allow water to move from one side to the other. They also cemented the culverts in place and drove vertical steel reinforcements in the ground to prevent re-exposure of the pipelines.
Two giant culverts will now carry water under the pipelines. Shown above: the outfall.Steel reinforcements rise above the level of the pipelines to help retard erosion.Photo taken 2/13/2020.Rip rap and other reinforcements will also help retard erosion.Inlets for the culverts. Photo taken 2/13/2020.Looking west toward The Woodlands. San Jacinto West Fork is at far end of sand mine. Note all the sand and sediment that has washed under this area to the far side of the steel reinforcements.
As of 2/13/2020, crews were filling dirt in under, around and over the pipelines.
The repairs here appear much more substantial than in the Triple PG mine. I just hope the volume of sand washing from one section of the mine to the other does not clog the culverts. The steel reinforcements will protect the pipelines in this location, but water has a habit of flowing around obstacles.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 2/23/2020
908 Days after Hurricane Harvey 157 since Imelda
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/20200213-RJR_7697.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=18001200adminadmin2020-02-23 10:43:352020-02-23 10:57:20Progress on Pipeline Repairs at Sand Mines
What causes street flooding? At the risk of clarifying the obvious, rain accumulates faster than storm sewers and drainage ditches can carry it away.
A Lack-Of-Capacity Issue
Most streets are actually designed to be part of the flood retention system in any community. That’s because most storm sewers can only handle a two-year rain (about 2 inches per hour). When we get more than that – say a 10-, 25-, 50- or 100-year rain – water is stored in the street until capacity opens up in the storm sewers, ditches and creeks.
As you can see from the new Atlas-14 rainfall chart below, a 2-year rain in this area is 2.23 inches/hour; a 25-year rain 3.88 inches/hour; and a 100-year rain 4.88.
New Atlas-14 Rainfall Data for Lake Houston area from NOAA
When evaluating rainfalls, look at the storm totals AND shorter intervals, such as 15, 30 and 60 minutes.
Street flooding usually results from short, high-intensity downpours caused by slow-moving or training thunderstorms.
From a street-flooding perspective, getting 4 inches of rain in one day is not the same as getting 4 inches in one hour.
If you get 2 inches of rain in 30 minutes, you’re already at a 5-year rain. That’s well beyond the design capacity of storm sewers. You can expect water to back up into the street at that point, even if there are no blockages in the storm sewers.
That’s why builders elevate most homes several feet above street level and above the 100-year flood plain. It gives you an additional margin of safety.
How To Determine Intensity of Rainfalls
If you flooded from your street, first determine whether the cause was simply overwhelming rainfall or whether complicating factors existed.
How can you determine how much rain you got in any given time interval during a storm? Follow these simple steps:
Click on the gage nearest you. (For me, that’s Gage #755 at the San Jacinto West Fork and West Lake Houston Parkway. I will use that in the example below.)
In the pop-up window, click on the “For More Information” button.
At the top of the next window, select date and time intervals. The Time Interval varies from One Hour to One Year. I selected September 19, 2019 (the day of Imelda) and 24 hours. That shows me 24 1-hour intervals. From this and the table above, you can see that we had three very intense hours in a row during Imelda.
HarrisCountyFWS.org shows we got almost 11 inches during Imelda, the vast majority of it in three hours.Note: selecting other time intervals displays other time increments.For instance the system breaks hours down into 5-minute increments, years into months, etc.
From the two charts above, correlate the actual precipitation with the recurrence intervals. You can see that…
We had a 10-year rain, followed by a 5-year rain, followed by a 2-year rain – all in three hours!
Every single one of those hours met or exceeded the maximum capacity of the storm sewers. So it’s easy to see WHY we had street flooding.
When Street Flooding Turns into Home Flooding
In a small percentage of cases, street flooding turns into HOME flooding – when there simply isn’t enough backup capacity in the streets. (In the following discussion, I’m EXCLUDING homes that flooded from rivers, streams, or overland sheet flow during Imelda, i.e., Ben’s Branch, Elm Grove, etc.).
Extreme events reveal the weaknesses in any system. If your home was:
At a low point on the street…
Near a clogged storm drain…
A foot or two lower than surrounding homes…
At the bottom of a hill…
In an area where water collected or converged…
Near an outfall pipe that collapsed or was blocked…
Upstream from a ditch that was blocked…
…you may have flooded.
And then there are the bizarre cases.
I visited one man in Trailwood at the bottom of a hill that had NO storm drains. Inexplicably, someone placed the nearest drain in the middle of the hill – about half a block ABOVE his home.
Another man called me who lived near Village Park Drive next to a tributary of Ben’s Branch. The Community Association had erected a fence between the end of the street and the tributary. They built the fence so low to the ground that it became clogged with weeds and grass clippings during Imelda and formed a dam. In the heavy rain, water could not get under it and backed up into his home.
What Can You Do?
Short of praying or digging up every street in Houston to enlarge the storm sewers, homeowners DO have some remedies.
Keep storm drains clear. Keep yard waste out of them.
Call 311 for a storm-drain inspection if you suspect yours have become clogged. The City is currently inspecting ALL drains in Kingwood subdivisions that had street flooding last year.
Inspect outfall pipes where your storm drains enter the nearest ditch to ensure they have not collapsed or become blocked.
Look out for new construction, such as the fence above, that may back water up. Remove or elevate the horizontal rot board if it blocks the overflow of water from your street.
If the problem recurs in less extreme events, consider flood proofing or elevating your home.
Make sure you have flood insurance; that it’s up to date; and that it reflects the true replacement value of your home.
Wide shot from farther up the block of fence shown above. Gap under fence did not exist at time of Imelda.Note how rot board has NOW been elevated to allow water collecting in street to get into creek beyond fence.
Great Options Where Possible
If your area floods repeatedly, you may also be interested in lobbying the City or County to build an overflow spillway or detention pond between your street and the nearest drainage channel. Obviously, geographic circumstances may rule this possibility out for many. But if you have a vacant lot in your neighborhood and a nearby ditch…
Example of community detention pond with overflow channel to Taylor Gully (beyond fence). This wasn’t enough to protect North Kingwood Forest in Imelda, but their problem was complicated by sheet flow from Woodridge Village.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 2/22/2020
907 Days after Hurricane Harvey and 156 after Imelda
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/20200203-RJR_7540.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=18001200adminadmin2020-02-22 19:33:112020-02-23 04:47:14Street Flooding: Causes and Cures
In a marathon meeting last night, the SJRA modified the seasonal lowering program for Lake Conroe. The adopted motion does not exactly follow the City of Houston’s last-minute compromise recommendation. It delays lowering the lake to 199.5 feet until after September 1 to accommodate boaters and businesses on Lake Conroe. The City had recommended lowering the lake to that level beginning August 1. The old policy called for lowering the lake all the way to 199 in both months.
Details of Plan
Minutes of the meeting have not yet been approved, but here is the preliminary summary:
Spring lowering:
Lower to 200’ msl (mean feet above sea level) beginning April 1 through May 31. Recapture begins June 1.
Fall lowering:
Beginning August 1, lower to 200’ msl.
Beginning September 1, lower to 199.5’ msl.
Tropical Storm Provision:
If a named storm enters the region, City of Houston may initiate an additional prerelease to 199’ msl by requesting the SJRA to do so in writing. SJRA staff will coordinate with COH staff on the details and timing of the lowering.
Duration of Program
The program will continue through December 2022, giving the City of Houston enough time to add additional gates to Lake Houston and complete West Fork dredging.
1400 Crowd Convention Hall for 5-Hour Meeting
More than 1400 people crammed into the meeting at the Lone Star Convention Center in Conroe. The meeting lasted more than five hours. Some people arrived hours earlier to make sure they got seats.
Estimated crowd of 1400. White shirts from Lake Houston, red from Lake Conroe.
Lake Conroe residents still outnumbered Lake Houston residents by 2 to 1, but it was far better than the 20 to 1 ratio in previous meetings on this topic.
Also present at last night’s meeting were people from between the two lakes in communities such as River Plantation. More than 1100 people between Lake Conroe and Lake Houston flooded during Harvey when the SJRA released 80,000 cubic feet per second.
Flooded Protester at February SJRA Board Meeting
Plea for Civility Starts Meeting
The meeting started with a plea by the chambers of commerce from the two areas for unity and civility. And the meeting was in fact far more civilthan previous meetings on this topic. Gone was the bar room atmosphere of jeers, catcalls, name calling, interruptions, and physical threats.
Staff Presentation and Mayor’s Letter Change Debate
Before public comments began, two developments totally changed the debate. Most people expected the SJRA to decide between continuing or scrapping the existing plan. However, the evening before the meeting, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner sent a letter to the SJRA suggesting a compromise proposal: 200 msl in the spring and 199.5 in the fall. Then Chuck Gilman, SJRA’s Director of Water Resources and Flood Management, kicked off the meeting with an alternate proposal: 200 msl in spring AND fall.
Gilman’s presentation to the board emphasized lowering the lake one foot could have prevented releases in all but three storms in the last twenty years. Gilman’s team correlated the average rise in lake level per inch of rainfall in dozens of events. See graph below.
SJRA data shows that 1-foot of extra lake level (yellow line) would handle all but three storms that occurred in last 20 years. Hurricane Harvey was excluded from graph because it was considered an anomaly.
“A review of historic rainfall data and corresponding lake rise suggests less than 2 feet of storage is adequate to catch most storm events at Lake Conroe that occur in the fall,” said Gilman.
“Only two rainfall events that occurred in the months of August and September since 1999 (excluding 2017) resulted in more than one-foot of rise in Lake Conroe. More than 90% of these events resulted in less than 3 inches of rise in Lake Conroe. Five named tropical storms in this same period resulted in less than 12 inches of rise,” he said.
Many residents in attendance questioned why the SJRA excluded 1994 and Harvey from examination in the chart above. The worst downstream damage occurred during those two events.
Both the City’s proposal and the SJRA’s came as surprises to many people. Instead of choosing between A and B, suddenly C and D became options, too.
Board Settles on Compromise to Mayor’s Compromise Proposal
In the end, the proposal adopted by the SJRA differed from the City’s in one key respect. The level of Lake Conroe remains a half foot higher in August to accommodate boaters during vacation season. SJRA Board President Lloyd Tisdale characterized August revenue as vital to the area’s economy. Tisdale said vacationing falls off significantly after Labor Day.
Board member Kaaren Cambio who represents the Lake Houston area preferred the Mayor’s proposal but acknowledged that the final plan “balances flood mitigation with water supply and recreation. The board heard businesses and delaying the fall release will extend the boating season.”
The approved plan still lets the City of Houston call for lowering to 199 msl if forecasters predict a named tropical storm will enter the region within five days.
The City owns two thirds of the water in the lake. City Council Member Dave Martin said in his remarks before the board voted that “The City could take the lake down to 180 msl if it wanted.”
In the end, it appeared that the Board punted any responsibility for painful reductions and put that onus on the City.
State Emphasizing Need for Cooperation within Watersheds
Much of the board’s debate focused whether to adopt the City’s proposal verbatim. Board President Tisdale’s opening remarks cited the importance of partnership with other entities in the region. Legislation adopted in 2019 places a premium on cooperation within a watershed. The Texas Water Development Board can financially penalize those that don’t cooperate. They now score grant requests based on how well all affected areas work together. “We have to look at this as a regional flooding issue,” said Tisdale.
Upstream/Downstream Split
Both Lake Houston area Board Members, Kaaren Cambio and Mark Micheletti, argued for adopting the City’s plan, but none of the other board members agreed. In the end, they voted to adopt a plan that delayed lowering the Lake to 199.5 until September 1.
Net Effect Vs. Historical Averages
After a debate going back to 2018, we now have a lake-lowering plan that closely mirrors Mother Nature’s. Unless we’re in a very wet or very dry year.
Compared to historical averages, the SJRA will lower Lake Conroe:
4 to 5 inches in April and May
0 inches in August
3 inches in September
Historical monthly lake level averages since Lake Conroe was built. Variation due to evaporation and rainfall rates.Source: SJRA January 2020 Board Presentation by Chuck Gilman.
Of course, that assumes the City does NOT call for greater reductions. Also keep in mind that these are averages, not certainties. If the lake levels are higher or lower than the average in any given year, these reductions would vary.
The primary protection provided by the policy adopted by the SJRA would occur in a very wet year when the lake was full up to 201 msl. Then the reduction would be 12 inches in August and 18 in September.
State Representative Dan Huberty who gave a powerful speech before the board began deliberations, said, “I am proud of our community and how we came together, including the State (Especially Governor Abbott and Chief Nim Kidd), the City, the County, our Chamber and most importantly our citizens.”
Huberty continued, “Thank you for showing up and being respectful but forceful. We worked very hard, and in the end won a vote that achieves our goal of lake lowering. Special thanks to Mark Micheletti and Kaaren Cambio for having the courage to stand up with and for the recommendation from Mayor Turner and Mayor Pro-Tem Martin.”
The City of Houston provided no comment.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 2/21/2020
906 Days after Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/One-Foot.jpg?fit=1500%2C857&ssl=18571500adminadmin2020-02-21 14:05:282020-02-21 17:06:45SJRA Adopts Modified Lake Lowering Program
Progress on Pipeline Repairs at Sand Mines
In the last month, workers made progress on pipeline bed repairs to two area sand mines. But repairs at one sand mine look substantial. At another, they look superficial. Triple PG in Porter is still edging into the danger zone.
Exposed by Erosion When Mining Came Too Close
In December and January, I posted about pipelines exposed when sand miners mined too close to them. Floodwaters then swept through the mines and undercut the pipelines, creating safety hazards.
Several HVL (highly volatile liquid) pipelines (above) and one natural gas pipeline (below) were affected at mines in Conroe and Porter.
Here’s where things stand on repairs at both mines as of last week..
Triple PG Mine in Porter: Another Big Cover Up
The Triple PG Mine in Porter has covered up the exposed natural gas pipeline with sand. As of 2/13/2020, Triple PG had made no other visible attempts to stabilize the area, which is subject to repeated erosion. Harvey first exposed the pipeline, which Triple PG subsequently covered. Then Imelda re-exposed it. And Triple PG re-covered it.
Readers may remember that after Harvey, Kinder Morgan tunneled 75 feet under the mine and spliced in a replacement for the section that had been exposed. They then filled the cutoff section with inert gas. So the exposed section was not active.
Still, without further stabilization, the pipeline will likely be exposed again and again by future storms.
Triple PG still has made no attempt to stabilize erosion creeping toward the HVL pipelines that cross the mine in a utility corridor. The same erosion that exposed the natural gas pipeline will threaten those in future storms.
Liberty Materials Mine in Conroe: Fix Nearing Completion
At a Liberty Materials Mine in Conroe, a much more substantial fix is underway by the pipelines. The mine spanned both sides of the utility corridor. Water from one side, trying to get to the river on the other, washed under several HVL pipelines, exposing them.
Repairs began in January and were well under way in February. Crews first expanded the washed out area under the pipelines. Then they placed two giant culverts under the pipelines to allow water to move from one side to the other. They also cemented the culverts in place and drove vertical steel reinforcements in the ground to prevent re-exposure of the pipelines.
As of 2/13/2020, crews were filling dirt in under, around and over the pipelines.
The repairs here appear much more substantial than in the Triple PG mine. I just hope the volume of sand washing from one section of the mine to the other does not clog the culverts. The steel reinforcements will protect the pipelines in this location, but water has a habit of flowing around obstacles.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 2/23/2020
908 Days after Hurricane Harvey 157 since Imelda
Street Flooding: Causes and Cures
What causes street flooding? At the risk of clarifying the obvious, rain accumulates faster than storm sewers and drainage ditches can carry it away.
A Lack-Of-Capacity Issue
Most streets are actually designed to be part of the flood retention system in any community. That’s because most storm sewers can only handle a two-year rain (about 2 inches per hour). When we get more than that – say a 10-, 25-, 50- or 100-year rain – water is stored in the street until capacity opens up in the storm sewers, ditches and creeks.
As you can see from the new Atlas-14 rainfall chart below, a 2-year rain in this area is 2.23 inches/hour; a 25-year rain 3.88 inches/hour; and a 100-year rain 4.88.
When evaluating rainfalls, look at the storm totals AND shorter intervals, such as 15, 30 and 60 minutes.
From a street-flooding perspective, getting 4 inches of rain in one day is not the same as getting 4 inches in one hour.
If you get 2 inches of rain in 30 minutes, you’re already at a 5-year rain. That’s well beyond the design capacity of storm sewers. You can expect water to back up into the street at that point, even if there are no blockages in the storm sewers.
That’s why builders elevate most homes several feet above street level and above the 100-year flood plain. It gives you an additional margin of safety.
How To Determine Intensity of Rainfalls
If you flooded from your street, first determine whether the cause was simply overwhelming rainfall or whether complicating factors existed.
How can you determine how much rain you got in any given time interval during a storm? Follow these simple steps:
From the two charts above, correlate the actual precipitation with the recurrence intervals. You can see that…
Every single one of those hours met or exceeded the maximum capacity of the storm sewers. So it’s easy to see WHY we had street flooding.
When Street Flooding Turns into Home Flooding
In a small percentage of cases, street flooding turns into HOME flooding – when there simply isn’t enough backup capacity in the streets. (In the following discussion, I’m EXCLUDING homes that flooded from rivers, streams, or overland sheet flow during Imelda, i.e., Ben’s Branch, Elm Grove, etc.).
Extreme events reveal the weaknesses in any system. If your home was:
…you may have flooded.
And then there are the bizarre cases.
I visited one man in Trailwood at the bottom of a hill that had NO storm drains. Inexplicably, someone placed the nearest drain in the middle of the hill – about half a block ABOVE his home.
Another man called me who lived near Village Park Drive next to a tributary of Ben’s Branch. The Community Association had erected a fence between the end of the street and the tributary. They built the fence so low to the ground that it became clogged with weeds and grass clippings during Imelda and formed a dam. In the heavy rain, water could not get under it and backed up into his home.
What Can You Do?
Short of praying or digging up every street in Houston to enlarge the storm sewers, homeowners DO have some remedies.
Great Options Where Possible
If your area floods repeatedly, you may also be interested in lobbying the City or County to build an overflow spillway or detention pond between your street and the nearest drainage channel. Obviously, geographic circumstances may rule this possibility out for many. But if you have a vacant lot in your neighborhood and a nearby ditch…
Posted by Bob Rehak on 2/22/2020
907 Days after Hurricane Harvey and 156 after Imelda
SJRA Adopts Modified Lake Lowering Program
In a marathon meeting last night, the SJRA modified the seasonal lowering program for Lake Conroe. The adopted motion does not exactly follow the City of Houston’s last-minute compromise recommendation. It delays lowering the lake to 199.5 feet until after September 1 to accommodate boaters and businesses on Lake Conroe. The City had recommended lowering the lake to that level beginning August 1. The old policy called for lowering the lake all the way to 199 in both months.
Details of Plan
Minutes of the meeting have not yet been approved, but here is the preliminary summary:
Spring lowering:
Lower to 200’ msl (mean feet above sea level) beginning April 1 through May 31. Recapture begins June 1.
Fall lowering:
Tropical Storm Provision:
If a named storm enters the region, City of Houston may initiate an additional prerelease to 199’ msl by requesting the SJRA to do so in writing. SJRA staff will coordinate with COH staff on the details and timing of the lowering.
Duration of Program
The program will continue through December 2022, giving the City of Houston enough time to add additional gates to Lake Houston and complete West Fork dredging.
1400 Crowd Convention Hall for 5-Hour Meeting
More than 1400 people crammed into the meeting at the Lone Star Convention Center in Conroe. The meeting lasted more than five hours. Some people arrived hours earlier to make sure they got seats.
Also present at last night’s meeting were people from between the two lakes in communities such as River Plantation. More than 1100 people between Lake Conroe and Lake Houston flooded during Harvey when the SJRA released 80,000 cubic feet per second.
Plea for Civility Starts Meeting
The meeting started with a plea by the chambers of commerce from the two areas for unity and civility. And the meeting was in fact far more civil than previous meetings on this topic. Gone was the bar room atmosphere of jeers, catcalls, name calling, interruptions, and physical threats.
Staff Presentation and Mayor’s Letter Change Debate
Before public comments began, two developments totally changed the debate. Most people expected the SJRA to decide between continuing or scrapping the existing plan. However, the evening before the meeting, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner sent a letter to the SJRA suggesting a compromise proposal: 200 msl in the spring and 199.5 in the fall. Then Chuck Gilman, SJRA’s Director of Water Resources and Flood Management, kicked off the meeting with an alternate proposal: 200 msl in spring AND fall.
Gilman’s presentation to the board emphasized lowering the lake one foot could have prevented releases in all but three storms in the last twenty years. Gilman’s team correlated the average rise in lake level per inch of rainfall in dozens of events. See graph below.
“A review of historic rainfall data and corresponding lake rise suggests less than 2 feet of storage is adequate to catch most storm events at Lake Conroe that occur in the fall,” said Gilman.
“Only two rainfall events that occurred in the months of August and September since 1999 (excluding 2017) resulted in more than one-foot of rise in Lake Conroe. More than 90% of these events resulted in less than 3 inches of rise in Lake Conroe. Five named tropical storms in this same period resulted in less than 12 inches of rise,” he said.
Many residents in attendance questioned why the SJRA excluded 1994 and Harvey from examination in the chart above. The worst downstream damage occurred during those two events.
Both the City’s proposal and the SJRA’s came as surprises to many people. Instead of choosing between A and B, suddenly C and D became options, too.
Board Settles on Compromise to Mayor’s Compromise Proposal
In the end, the proposal adopted by the SJRA differed from the City’s in one key respect. The level of Lake Conroe remains a half foot higher in August to accommodate boaters during vacation season. SJRA Board President Lloyd Tisdale characterized August revenue as vital to the area’s economy. Tisdale said vacationing falls off significantly after Labor Day.
Board member Kaaren Cambio who represents the Lake Houston area preferred the Mayor’s proposal but acknowledged that the final plan “balances flood mitigation with water supply and recreation. The board heard businesses and delaying the fall release will extend the boating season.”
The City owns two thirds of the water in the lake. City Council Member Dave Martin said in his remarks before the board voted that “The City could take the lake down to 180 msl if it wanted.”
State Emphasizing Need for Cooperation within Watersheds
Much of the board’s debate focused whether to adopt the City’s proposal verbatim. Board President Tisdale’s opening remarks cited the importance of partnership with other entities in the region. Legislation adopted in 2019 places a premium on cooperation within a watershed. The Texas Water Development Board can financially penalize those that don’t cooperate. They now score grant requests based on how well all affected areas work together. “We have to look at this as a regional flooding issue,” said Tisdale.
Upstream/Downstream Split
Both Lake Houston area Board Members, Kaaren Cambio and Mark Micheletti, argued for adopting the City’s plan, but none of the other board members agreed. In the end, they voted to adopt a plan that delayed lowering the Lake to 199.5 until September 1.
Net Effect Vs. Historical Averages
After a debate going back to 2018, we now have a lake-lowering plan that closely mirrors Mother Nature’s. Unless we’re in a very wet or very dry year.
Compared to historical averages, the SJRA will lower Lake Conroe:
Of course, that assumes the City does NOT call for greater reductions. Also keep in mind that these are averages, not certainties. If the lake levels are higher or lower than the average in any given year, these reductions would vary.
State Representative Dan Huberty who gave a powerful speech before the board began deliberations, said, “I am proud of our community and how we came together, including the State (Especially Governor Abbott and Chief Nim Kidd), the City, the County, our Chamber and most importantly our citizens.”
Huberty continued, “Thank you for showing up and being respectful but forceful. We worked very hard, and in the end won a vote that achieves our goal of lake lowering. Special thanks to Mark Micheletti and Kaaren Cambio for having the courage to stand up with and for the recommendation from Mayor Turner and Mayor Pro-Tem Martin.”
The City of Houston provided no comment.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 2/21/2020
906 Days after Hurricane Harvey