7/1/25 – Caution: This post will make your head swim; but it’s better than drowning in the next flood. Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) data presented to the public differs radically from data presented to commissioners last week. One audience sees spending going up. The other sees spending going down.
Some areas will get little or no support from HCFCD while others that have already received hundreds of millions of dollars will get hundreds of millions more. My conclusion: flood-mitigation decisions have become purely political, not data driven under this commissioners court.
How Reliable is the Data?
So how reliable is the data? In this and upcoming posts, I’ll look at several different examples. Today, let’s look at two trend lines: one presented by HCFCD Director Dr. Tina Petersen last week to commissioners. The other comes from HCFCD’s public-facing website.
Here is a graph from the last page of Petersen’s presentation. It paints a pretty rosy picture. Work and spending going straight up for five years. If you’re a commissioner, you’re probably thinking, “Gee, I better get my project completed before the money runs out.”
But buried on HCFCD’s website several layers down is this graph. It paints a bleaker picture. If you’re a resident, you’re probably asking, “With billions of dollars in the bank and inflation eating up bond dollars, why is mitigation activity slowing down? Hurry up and finish my projects!”
Another portion of the page below shows that HCFCD has only spent $1.5 billion from the bond so far, but Petersen’s presentation shows they have $5.2 billion when you include partner funds.
This is a very concerning graph that raises questions about the efficiency of HCFCD and how much of the bond has been lost to inflation.
To show the differences between the two trends, I combined them in a third graph. It’s one thing to paint rosy projections for your bosses. And it’s another to overcome years of lost momentum. But there’s an even bigger problem. Look at the years where lines overlap in the middle. The data for past spending doesn’t agree. Oops!
Series1 represents reported spending data except for 2025, where I annualized first-quarter spending.
Series 2 takes reported and projected spending from Petersen’s bar graph.
Where the lines overlap, the graphs should match perfectly, but they don’t. So I called for an explanation.
HCFCD explains the difference by saying the dark line uses calendar-year data and the orange line uses fiscal-year data. They vary by three months and $23 million. But HCFCD says that otherwise the two sources “numerically align.” I asked what that meant and was told “They match.” Ooooookayyyyy….
But according to data obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Requests in previous years, HCFCD spent:
$217 million in FY2023, not the $175 million shown in Petersen’s bar graph.
$254 million in FY2024, not the $210 million shown in her bar graph.
Now my head is swimming. We have THREE values that vary by $42 million for 2023 and $69 million for 2024. See below.
You could build a major project with $69 million!
Unanswered Questions and Uncertainty
An old proverb says, “A man with two watches never knows what time it is.”
Harris County Flood Control District has a real problem. Their financial projections have all the certainty of a 5-year weather forecast. They can’t even agree on LAST year’s weather.
Yet they’re making policy decisions that affect people’s lives with this data. And in the process, they’re destroying trust in government.
There may be a logical explanation. But it’s not apparent or explained anywhere with the data people see.
Why are their numbers different in different places? Who is getting the truth and who is not?
More examples to follow. This is Part One of Three.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/1/25
2863 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Actual-and-Projected-Bond-Spending-e1751425476898.png?fit=1100%2C665&ssl=16651100adminadmin2025-07-01 22:16:392025-07-02 11:22:54HCFCD Data Shows Spending Going Up and Down Simultaneously
6/30/25 – The City of Houston Public Works Department wasted no time in starting to clean out a blocked ditch under Kingwood Drive. Once they found it.
The ditch, which parallels Valley Manor Drive west of Kingwood High School, had been neglected for so long that crews had a hard time finding it.
Distraught residents were ready to call in Indiana Jones. But City Council Member Fred Flickinger arrived first.
Still contractors are in for what qualifies as an “archeological dig.” Who knows what they’ll find in there? Residents found a mummified car wreck nearby, completely encased by a jungle of vines.
Photos of Work Beginning
Drainage Ditch Blockage West of High School in Kingwood Drive median. Before start of project.Looking S toward Lake Kingwood. Here’s what that same area looks like today after the start of cleanup.
It’s far from done. But at least you can see what you’re up against. Contractors are reportedly trying to get clearance from the Kingwood Country Club to remove the downstream blockage, too.
Looking N from Kingwood Country Club Lake Course toward Kings Forest.Still looking N at culverts under westbound Kingwood Drive, you can see they are literally half filled with silt.
All that silt reduces conveyance and backs water up in heavy rains. 110 homes upstream from this blocked ditch under Kingwood Drive flooded during Harvey.
Scope of Work
According to Council Member Flickinger’s newsletter, the scope of work includes clearing and grubbing approximately six acres of land, removing and disposing of debris, trash, and tires at a landfill, as well as the removal of trees.
Any trees removed for the purpose of accessing the ditch will be replanted at a later date by Council Member Flickinger’s office with the help of Trees for Kingwood.
The project is entirely on Bear Branch Trail Association BBTA property and is being closely watched by BBTA and neighbors.
Project area outlined in red
The project cost is $350,568.00 and is funded through the Houston Public Works Dedicated Drainage & Street Renewal Fund (DDSRF).
The City is preserving native trees wherever possible and trying only to remove invasive species. However, some trees may need to go to allow heavy equipment room to maneuver.
Project Completion, Work Hours, Impacts
Crews are already hard at work. And the project should end by Friday, August 29, 2025, weather permitting.
Construction activities will take place Monday through Saturday from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Sundays upon approval from the project manager.
The City expects no impacts to the sanitary sewer system. During the course of the work, some minor water line adjustments will be necessary. Citizens will be notified 72 hours in advance of any water outages.
Safety Caution
Please be aware of flagmen and orange traffic cones that may be present on-site to guide traffic as needed. However, this project is not expected to cause any traffic or mobility issues, such as lane closures or a significant increase in truck traffic.
Also note: there may be elevated noise levels at times due to the use of construction equipment and vehicles in the area.
For more information, please contact the District E office at (832) 393-3008 or via email at districte@houstontx.gov.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/30/2025
2862 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/20250629-DJI_20250629192138_0422_D.jpg?fit=1100%2C619&ssl=16191100adminadmin2025-06-30 18:53:112025-06-30 18:53:12City Begins Clearing Blocked Ditch Under Kingwood Drive
6/30/25 and 7/3/25 – Updated to clarify a distinction between Bond Projects and Bond IDs, and also correct several entries in tables.
6/29/25 – Analysis of documents released after the Harris County Commissioner’s Court meeting on 6/26/25, shows that because of a claimed 25% flood-bond funding shortfall, the county will stop funding 80% of Bond IDs and 75% of Bond projects. Precinct 3 will bear the most cuts.
Usually, precincts share equally, but in this case, Precinct 3, the lone Republican-led district will retain only 14% of active projects.
Before the meeting, the county had released only one blank page about what turned out to be the disappearance of more than a billion dollars.
Something’s not adding up that demands an explanation.
Huh? 80% of Projects Cut after Losing 25% of Funding?
The $2.5 billion Bond was sold with a project list that totaled roughly $5.1 billion. However, partner funding more than made up the difference. Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) has commitments for another $2.7 billion – bringing the total available to $5.2 billion. A $1.3 billion shortfall is 25% of that total.
Questions:
Why the shortfall?
Why the disproportionate cuts?
Why are we only learning now – seven years into the bond?
Are the proposed cuts fair?
Reasons Proposed for Shortfall
In her presentation Dr. Tina Petersen, executive director of HCFCD, attempted to explain the shortfall by alluding to:
Cost increases (i.e., due to inflation)
Grant requirements
Changing regulations
Right-of-way acquisitions
Program structure
Others have alluded to:
Scope creep
Cumbersome processes related to Ellis equity formula
Slow execution
Political interference
Need for more money in the original bond
Changes in leadership at HCFCD
Personnel turnover at lower levels
Unnecessary bureaucracy that adds cost without adding value
Covid
Low initial estimates
Addition of projects
IT system issues
Why Such Draconian Cuts?
Why are the cuts so disproportionate to the shortfall?
But it also called to fully fund future costs associated with those projects. That builds scope creep into the bond.
If, for instance, the Flood Bond only included a preliminary engineering review for a project, it will now include full engineering, design, right-of-way acquisition, construction, landscaping, turnover costs and bagels.
In other words…
Funding for projects that voters approved is being cut to pay for projects they didn’t approve.
It’s a fundamental breach of public trust.
Why Are We Only Learning Now?
Since Harris County Democratic Commissioners brought in new management, HCFCD has largely gone dark. For example:
The District, once a paragon of transparency, efficiency, and speed under the previous leadership, has largely stopped updating its website as performance decreased.
Harris County Flood Control bid only three projects last year.
Active projects used to be updated weekly. Now they’ve disappeared from the website.
Bond-update frequency fell from monthly to quarterly to semi-annually to whenever-we-get-around-to-it. The last one took more than a year.
The County’s Flood Resilience Task Force is still waiting for flood-risk data it requested years ago.
The lack of information masks serious issues that have built for years concerning the efficiency and transparency of Flood Control.
In last week’s discussion, Judge Lina Hidalgo complained repeatedly and bitterly about her lack of understanding, a lack of transparency and her inability to get simple, straight answers.
But hey, what kind of manager puts up with that? For seven years!
Are Cuts Fair?
The County uses Rodney Ellis’ Equity Prioritization Index to rank flood-mitigation Bond IDs from 0 to 10 using a multi-factor index. Some Bond IDs contain multiple projects. But whether you assess the cuts by Bond ID or Projects, P3 still suffers the most.
After a marathon 5-hour discussion, Commissioners voted to continue funding only projects scoring above 7.5. The rest will die.
Ellis’ scoring matrix gives 65% weight to factors such as race, household income, social vulnerability, population density, and housing density.
It gives no weight to flood damage, severity of flooding, flood frequency, or flood risk.
Ellis cherry-picked statistics to gerrymander flood-control dollars, not reduce damage.
Many of the remaining dollars in the bond will go to watersheds that have already received hundreds of millions of dollars in mitigation funds. Meanwhile…
Other watersheds that have been shortchanged will now have their pockets picked.
Precinct 3 had the highest flooding in the county during Harvey.
Yet Precinct 3, the lone, Republican-led precinct, bore the brunt of the funding cuts wide margins.
Precinct 3 projects will suffer the most.
Here’s a breakdown of the totals by quintile and precinct. Because projects sometimes cross precinct boundaries, when a project did so, I counted it once for each precinct it benefitted.
Next, look at Bond IDs. A bond ID may contain multiple projects. And again, when a Bond ID benefited two precincts, I counted it twice. Percentages change slightly. But the same basic picture emerges…only more so:
Precinct 3 had the most Bond IDs defunded and kept the fewest.
Barrett Station is in Precinct 3. It’s one of the poorest areas in the county. And it had its funding cut. That shows this is more about politics than concern for the poor.
The funding cuts likely won’t affect a subset of 29 projects funded by HUD because those are 100% federally funded. Regardless…
The county will now pursue only one in four or five of the remaining bond projects/IDs.
Stunned citizens are struggling to comprehend the scope of the cuts, which will negatively impact roughly 80% of the county.
No wonder the county kept a tight lid on its analysis and didn’t post anything for the public to review before the meeting. Protesters might have showed up to counter two hours of testimony by Ellis’ surrogates last Thursday.
We Need to Demand…
Answers.
Action.
Accountability.
Fairness.
And we need them fast. Frankly, I’m surprised no one has filed a lawsuit yet. This feels like slow-motion voter fraud.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/29/25and updated on 6/30/25
2861 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.
HCFCD Data Shows Spending Going Up and Down Simultaneously
7/1/25 – Caution: This post will make your head swim; but it’s better than drowning in the next flood. Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) data presented to the public differs radically from data presented to commissioners last week. One audience sees spending going up. The other sees spending going down.
Commissioners used confusing, contradictory data like this, at least in part, to cut 80% of the remaining projects in the flood bond last week with a claimed 25% funding shortfall.
Some areas will get little or no support from HCFCD while others that have already received hundreds of millions of dollars will get hundreds of millions more. My conclusion: flood-mitigation decisions have become purely political, not data driven under this commissioners court.
How Reliable is the Data?
So how reliable is the data? In this and upcoming posts, I’ll look at several different examples. Today, let’s look at two trend lines: one presented by HCFCD Director Dr. Tina Petersen last week to commissioners. The other comes from HCFCD’s public-facing website.
Here is a graph from the last page of Petersen’s presentation. It paints a pretty rosy picture. Work and spending going straight up for five years. If you’re a commissioner, you’re probably thinking, “Gee, I better get my project completed before the money runs out.”
But buried on HCFCD’s website several layers down is this graph. It paints a bleaker picture. If you’re a resident, you’re probably asking, “With billions of dollars in the bank and inflation eating up bond dollars, why is mitigation activity slowing down? Hurry up and finish my projects!”
Another portion of the page below shows that HCFCD has only spent $1.5 billion from the bond so far, but Petersen’s presentation shows they have $5.2 billion when you include partner funds.
This is a very concerning graph that raises questions about the efficiency of HCFCD and how much of the bond has been lost to inflation.
To show the differences between the two trends, I combined them in a third graph. It’s one thing to paint rosy projections for your bosses. And it’s another to overcome years of lost momentum. But there’s an even bigger problem. Look at the years where lines overlap in the middle. The data for past spending doesn’t agree. Oops!
Where the lines overlap, the graphs should match perfectly, but they don’t. So I called for an explanation.
HCFCD explains the difference by saying the dark line uses calendar-year data and the orange line uses fiscal-year data. They vary by three months and $23 million. But HCFCD says that otherwise the two sources “numerically align.” I asked what that meant and was told “They match.” Ooooookayyyyy….
But according to data obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Requests in previous years, HCFCD spent:
Now my head is swimming. We have THREE values that vary by $42 million for 2023 and $69 million for 2024. See below.
You could build a major project with $69 million!
Unanswered Questions and Uncertainty
An old proverb says, “A man with two watches never knows what time it is.”
Harris County Flood Control District has a real problem. Their financial projections have all the certainty of a 5-year weather forecast. They can’t even agree on LAST year’s weather.
Yet they’re making policy decisions that affect people’s lives with this data. And in the process, they’re destroying trust in government.
There may be a logical explanation. But it’s not apparent or explained anywhere with the data people see.
Why are their numbers different in different places? Who is getting the truth and who is not?
More examples to follow. This is Part One of Three.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/1/25
2863 Days since Hurricane Harvey
City Begins Clearing Blocked Ditch Under Kingwood Drive
6/30/25 – The City of Houston Public Works Department wasted no time in starting to clean out a blocked ditch under Kingwood Drive. Once they found it.
The ditch, which parallels Valley Manor Drive west of Kingwood High School, had been neglected for so long that crews had a hard time finding it.
Distraught residents were ready to call in Indiana Jones. But City Council Member Fred Flickinger arrived first.
Still contractors are in for what qualifies as an “archeological dig.” Who knows what they’ll find in there? Residents found a mummified car wreck nearby, completely encased by a jungle of vines.
Photos of Work Beginning
It’s far from done. But at least you can see what you’re up against. Contractors are reportedly trying to get clearance from the Kingwood Country Club to remove the downstream blockage, too.
All that silt reduces conveyance and backs water up in heavy rains. 110 homes upstream from this blocked ditch under Kingwood Drive flooded during Harvey.
Scope of Work
According to Council Member Flickinger’s newsletter, the scope of work includes clearing and grubbing approximately six acres of land, removing and disposing of debris, trash, and tires at a landfill, as well as the removal of trees.
Any trees removed for the purpose of accessing the ditch will be replanted at a later date by Council Member Flickinger’s office with the help of Trees for Kingwood.
The project is entirely on Bear Branch Trail Association BBTA property and is being closely watched by BBTA and neighbors.
The project cost is $350,568.00 and is funded through the Houston Public Works Dedicated Drainage & Street Renewal Fund (DDSRF).
The City is preserving native trees wherever possible and trying only to remove invasive species. However, some trees may need to go to allow heavy equipment room to maneuver.
Project Completion, Work Hours, Impacts
Crews are already hard at work. And the project should end by Friday, August 29, 2025, weather permitting.
Construction activities will take place Monday through Saturday from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Sundays upon approval from the project manager.
The City expects no impacts to the sanitary sewer system. During the course of the work, some minor water line adjustments will be necessary. Citizens will be notified 72 hours in advance of any water outages.
Safety Caution
Please be aware of flagmen and orange traffic cones that may be present on-site to guide traffic as needed. However, this project is not expected to cause any traffic or mobility issues, such as lane closures or a significant increase in truck traffic.
Also note: there may be elevated noise levels at times due to the use of construction equipment and vehicles in the area.
For more information, please contact the District E office at (832) 393-3008 or via email at districte@houstontx.gov.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/30/2025
2862 Days since Hurricane Harvey
With 25% Funding Shortfall, 80% of Flood-Bond Projects Cut
6/30/25 and 7/3/25 – Updated to clarify a distinction between Bond Projects and Bond IDs, and also correct several entries in tables.
6/29/25 – Analysis of documents released after the Harris County Commissioner’s Court meeting on 6/26/25, shows that because of a claimed 25% flood-bond funding shortfall, the county will stop funding 80% of Bond IDs and 75% of Bond projects. Precinct 3 will bear the most cuts.
Usually, precincts share equally, but in this case, Precinct 3, the lone Republican-led district will retain only 14% of active projects.
Before the meeting, the county had released only one blank page about what turned out to be the disappearance of more than a billion dollars.
Even worse, to make up for the claimed shortfall, Democratic Commissioners voted 4:1 along party lines to defund most of the remaining projects voters approved in the 2018 Flood Bond.
Something’s not adding up that demands an explanation.
Huh? 80% of Projects Cut after Losing 25% of Funding?
The $2.5 billion Bond was sold with a project list that totaled roughly $5.1 billion. However, partner funding more than made up the difference. Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) has commitments for another $2.7 billion – bringing the total available to $5.2 billion. A $1.3 billion shortfall is 25% of that total.
Questions:
Reasons Proposed for Shortfall
In her presentation Dr. Tina Petersen, executive director of HCFCD, attempted to explain the shortfall by alluding to:
Others have alluded to:
Why Such Draconian Cuts?
Why are the cuts so disproportionate to the shortfall?
High on the list of possible explanations would be the motion that Democratic members of Commissioners Court approved.
It called to focus only on projects in the top quartile of Ellis’ Equity Prioritization Index.
But it also called to fully fund future costs associated with those projects. That builds scope creep into the bond.
If, for instance, the Flood Bond only included a preliminary engineering review for a project, it will now include full engineering, design, right-of-way acquisition, construction, landscaping, turnover costs and bagels.
In other words…
It’s a fundamental breach of public trust.
Why Are We Only Learning Now?
Since Harris County Democratic Commissioners brought in new management, HCFCD has largely gone dark. For example:
The lack of information masks serious issues that have built for years concerning the efficiency and transparency of Flood Control.
In last week’s discussion, Judge Lina Hidalgo complained repeatedly and bitterly about her lack of understanding, a lack of transparency and her inability to get simple, straight answers.
But hey, what kind of manager puts up with that? For seven years!
Are Cuts Fair?
The County uses Rodney Ellis’ Equity Prioritization Index to rank flood-mitigation Bond IDs from 0 to 10 using a multi-factor index. Some Bond IDs contain multiple projects. But whether you assess the cuts by Bond ID or Projects, P3 still suffers the most.
After a marathon 5-hour discussion, Commissioners voted to continue funding only projects scoring above 7.5. The rest will die.
Ellis’ scoring matrix gives 65% weight to factors such as race, household income, social vulnerability, population density, and housing density.
It gives no weight to flood damage, severity of flooding, flood frequency, or flood risk.
Ellis cherry-picked statistics to gerrymander flood-control dollars, not reduce damage.
Many of the remaining dollars in the bond will go to watersheds that have already received hundreds of millions of dollars in mitigation funds. Meanwhile…
Precinct 3 had the highest flooding in the county during Harvey.
Yet Precinct 3, the lone, Republican-led precinct, bore the brunt of the funding cuts wide margins.
Here’s a breakdown of the totals by quintile and precinct. Because projects sometimes cross precinct boundaries, when a project did so, I counted it once for each precinct it benefitted.
Next, look at Bond IDs. A bond ID may contain multiple projects. And again, when a Bond ID benefited two precincts, I counted it twice. Percentages change slightly. But the same basic picture emerges…only more so:
Barrett Station is in Precinct 3. It’s one of the poorest areas in the county. And it had its funding cut. That shows this is more about politics than concern for the poor.
To compile these tables and the pie chart above, I counted Bond IDs and Projects in each quartile in this spreadsheet,
The funding cuts likely won’t affect a subset of 29 projects funded by HUD because those are 100% federally funded. Regardless…
Stunned citizens are struggling to comprehend the scope of the cuts, which will negatively impact roughly 80% of the county.
No wonder the county kept a tight lid on its analysis and didn’t post anything for the public to review before the meeting. Protesters might have showed up to counter two hours of testimony by Ellis’ surrogates last Thursday.
We Need to Demand…
And we need them fast. Frankly, I’m surprised no one has filed a lawsuit yet. This feels like slow-motion voter fraud.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/29/25 and updated on 6/30/25
2861 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.