This is what East End Park used to look like – a natural gem within the nation’s fourth largest city, an urban refuge for wildlife on the East Fork, and an island of quiet enjoyed by more than 80,000 visitors per year.
Then Things Changed
After Harvey, sand and gravel dunes covered 30 acres (about 20 percent of the park’s 150 acres). The sand destroyed wetlands. Look at the wetland image three rows up in the center of the poster. Now look below. They’re the same area!
This bridge had to be excavated from several feet of sand after Harvey. It used to cross wetlands shown in the poster above.
Here’s what the trail looked like in the opposite direction before excavation.
Standing on five feet of sand deposited in East End Park wetlands
A bird’s nest ten feet up in a tree is now knee high because sand raised the ground elevation so much.
Natural or man-made disaster?
So I asked myself, where did all this sand come from? Was this just something that you have to accept when you live near a river? To find answers, I rented a helicopter and flew up the East Fork. Opposite East End Park, I saw this giant dune below, one of several along the way.
A new dune deposited during Harvey now blocks half of the East Fork opposite East End Park (upper right).
From ground level (below), you can see how tall it is – 10 to 12 feet. Some people who have climbed this dune tell me that it gets even higher back in the trees.
This new sand dune, created during Harvey is twice the height of the average human. A geologist told me that he doesn’t usually see changes this dramatic on a human time scale.
Farther up the river, I started to see what the problem might be.
A 750 acre sand mine hugs the banks of Caney Creek. Note how another giant sand bar adjacent to the mine again chokes off 50 percent of Caney Creek. Such blockages are now common.
As I flew around the northern part of the mine and started looking south, I saw large areas that are not being actively mined, yet are un-vegetated. This makes sand more susceptible to erosion in floods.
Flying closer to the giant stockpile, I noted its height relative to trees around it. Those trees typically grow up to 100 feet tall. That water tower in the background is on Kingwood Drive.
As I got closer to the stockpile, I noted ripples/wave forms in the lower part on the left and the remnants of heavy erosion from rainfall on the right. These are signs that water had been moving through the interior of this mine pretty quickly and that the dikes around them were no barrier to erosion.
Below, note how the road that comes up from the bottom left washed out inside of the mine.
Satellite imagery in Google Earth shows that the washout most likely happened during Harvey. It first shows up in satellite photos on 9/1/17.
I reviewed other areas within this mine in Google Earth. The mine measures more than 750 acres. The stockpile alone comprises 34 acres. The image below from 9/1/17 reveals severe erosion of this massive stockpile as Harvey’s floodwater’s receded.
Erosion in East Fork sand mine stockpile as Harvey’s floodwater’s receded.
Evidence Mounts: Clearer Picture Emerges
Satellite imagery below shows that no other sand mines are visible on the East Fork or its tributaries for miles around. None of the rivers or streams in this area seem to produce much. And all of those monster sand bars appear downstream. Hmmmm! Had we found the source of all that sand?
No other sand mines exist on Caney Creek. No huge sand bars show up above the mine; all appear below. Note that the sand bars represent only a tiny portion of the sand carried downstream; as in East End Park, huge volumes were deposited beneath the forest canopy and are not visible in satellite imagery.
Half of this mine lies in two floodways as shown in this USGS flood hazard viewer. The part of the stockpile that eroded most is in the the 100 year floodplain (aqua). See right side of circle. Brown represents the 500 year flood plain and the cross-hatched area represents the floodway, which is defined as the main current of the river during a 100-year flood.
According to Harris County Flood Control on page 12 of their final report, more than 20,000 cubic feet of water per second came down Caney Creek. And the Flood Control District has no gauges on White Oak Creek, the tributary that comes from the west, so the real flow total was higher. I can’t imagine how water would “back up” into this particular mine during an event like Harvey, especially during the early stages when everything was rushing downstream fast enough to wash out a road and erode a mountain of sand.
But still, those TACA guys are the experts, right?
I needed a way of showing exactly how fast the water was flowing through this area. Since there are no gages, I looked at particle sizes deposited downstream. Science tells us that rivers pick up particles in a particular order as flow increases and accelerates.
Erosion and Deposition of Various Particle Sizes at Different Velocities.
Among the new sand dunes at East End Park, I found gravel…lots of it.
Dunes of gravel or small pebbles were also found in East End Park.
If the current during Harvey was strong enough to pick up 2.5 centimeter pebbles like the one below, it was definitely strong enough to pick up sand. You can even see sand mixed in with the pebbles if you look closely.
Pebble found at top of ten-foot mound in East End Park. It measures about 2.5 centimeters.
To deposit gravel this size, the river was moving at about 150 cm/second – fast enough to pick up EVERYTHING smaller, including clay, silt, sand, gravel and pebbles (items listed below the horizontal axis on the chart above). The flow rate was high enough to move every type of material found in the mine.
While the sand miners claim the river wasn’t moving fast enough to carry sand out of the mines, the physical evidence suggests a different story.
Sand deposits reach high up on trees and are killing many smaller trees. The sand came from somewhere. There’s one likely culprit in my opinion.
1290 structures in Huffman and Kingwood flooded on the sand-clogged East Fork. See the purple and green totals right of the black line that bisects the purple. Those represent damaged structures in the East Fork watershed.
Harvey damaged 1290 Harris County structures in the East Fork watershed. Assuming an average loss of $250,000 for each structure and its contents, damage would total about $350,000,000 – one third of a billion dollars.
Recommended Next Steps
Even though no sedimentation surveys have yet been completed on the East Fork that could definitively link this sand to subsequent flooding, the Army Corps of Engineers has confirmed that similar sand blockages have contributed to flooding on the West Fork. (The Corps is currently embarking on a $70 million dredging project there…at taxpayer expense.)
My findings suggest that such a study should be done on the East Fork. Further, I believe that we need to:
Debate whether to allow sand mining in floodways, especially so close to the source of drinking water for 2 million people; sediment is rapidly filling the lake at an accelerating rate.
Strengthen permitting requirements, setbacks and best management practices
Enforce them by imposing prohibitive fines for violations.
Need to Strengthen TCEQ
Regarding the last point, in the five years from 2013 to 2017, the TCEQ found 619 violations at sand mining operations throughout Texas, but assessed only $506,151 in penalties. That’s about $101,000 per year and works out to an average of $817.69 per fine.
I know Texas is a business-friendly state; that’s why I moved here 40 years ago. But really! This is like the Legislature giving the Domino’s guy a license to speed 90mph through school zones so he can make more tips.
Those are my opinions on matters of public policy protected under the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP statutes of the great State of Texas. I sincerely hope that TACA can come to the table and help structure sensible mining regulations that protect the public, not just the profits of miners. I’ll talk more about what those might be in subsequent posts.
That would make Harvey a 33-year event in this area. Impossible, you say! The flow measured upstream from the mine was only the fourth highest on record.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/25/18
331 Days since Hurricane Harvey
00adminadmin2018-07-25 22:23:362018-07-26 07:31:17A Closer Look at Sand Issues on the East Fork of the San Jacinto
In June, I interviewed Milan Saunders, Chairman/CEO of Plains State Bank, and his daughter Lori Saunders, the bank’s COO. Both live in Kingwood Lakes with their respective families several blocks apart. I asked for this interview to learn how Harvey affected them personally and professionally, and to see whether the flood had a domino effect on other businesses beyond Houston. Spoiler alert: It did.
As we sit in a quiet corner of Amadeus, awaiting our meals, I ask Milan and Lori to start at the beginning. Both have photographic memories and brains that process information faster than computers. They begin with an almost hour-by-hour narrative of the storm’s approach. Clearly, almost a year later, the images remain vivid and painful.
It’s time to abandon ship. The Saunders household is swamped by Harvey.
Water and Plumbing Back Up
Milan: “Harvey approached the Houston area on Friday, August 25, and started dumping buckets of rain. Going into the weekend, we were tracking weather reports. On Saturday, things lightened up. Then the rains came back again. Sunday … a lot of rain. Monday … a lot of rain. By that afternoon, water was out of Lake Houston and it began to look pretty ominous. By Tuesday, water was also out of Lake Kingwood. We had only 18 inches between it and our threshold.”
Lori: “My plumbing was starting to back up on Sunday. That’s why I went over to Dad’s house.”
Milan: “Overnight, early Tuesday morning, water began to rise substantially. About 1 a.m., we wrapped the legs of our baby grand piano. In ‘94, we were spared, so I was thinking that, at worst, we would get a foot of water in the house.”
Reliving the Story While Retelling It
Milan continues the story in a series of rapid-fire images that seem to fade to black between each. “I went back to sleep. I was woken up at 6:30 in the morning. Came downstairs. At that point, I am standing in water up past my knees. I open the door and go outside. I am standing in water up to my belt. I see this rubber boat pulling in. First responders called out, ‘It’s a mandatory evacuation.’”
“I ask who they are. They say, ‘We’re firemen from Memphis, Tennessee.’ I say to myself, ‘Wait a minute!’ How did they know about it in time to get here from Memphis when I didn’t even know about it?”
Milan makes his great escape with wife and dog on a Wave Runner down Kingwood Drive
“Somehow, we managed to get our dog, a giant German Shepherd, balanced on my lap. They took us up the next street, and we got out there.”
As we delve deeper, Milan increasingly uses present tense, as though he is re-living Harvey in real time. His jaw clenches. The gets that 1000-yard stare. He is in another place and another time now.
“The next challenge is finding a place to shelter for me, my wife, my daughter, my granddaughter and grandson…which we do that afternoon.”
“I’m also worrying about the bank. We had been closed for four days already. The law says banks can’t be closed for more than three days in a row. We had already contacted our regulators to let them know that we were experiencing some really harsh difficulties.”
Never in 50 Years of Banking
“All of our employees are basically stranded. 59 is shut down. The force of water running over the highway has moved the concrete barriers on it.”
“Plains State does business far beyond Houston. We are keeping in touch with our West Texas people to help our clients out there, but our headquarters is in Humble and no one can get to it.”
“If I had had any idea this was going to happen, we would have gotten hotel rooms on the other side of the river for our employees.”
Rising tide of discontent sweeps across Kingwood
One image intrudes on another as Milan talks of his experience. He jumps from subject to subject as we nosh on our linguine.
“I lost my telephone while rescuing my granddaughter’s cat,” he says. “I lost both cars.” He begins talking in a staccato shorthand almost like he’s running down a mental checklist, a pilot evaluating options for an emergency landing. “No cars. No phone. Can’t get across the river.”
“It really made it very difficult for us to run the bank. None of our offices experienced flooding; we just couldn’t get people to the offices to move electronic files. That’s where our connections to the Fed and our core processor are.”
Lori: “A few days later, as flood waters started to subside, some folks in law enforcement told us about a way to get across the river. It was a very long way without the 59 bridge, but it worked. Some of our managers were able to get into the bank and start taking care of customers.”
Milan: “We were down five days. I’ve never experienced that in 50 years of banking.”
Bob: “Were there any repercussions for being closed five days?”
Milan: “Overall, our clients down here were very understanding. The West Texas folks didn’t understand as well. One client is a school district. They had end of month payroll to make.”
“Luckily, the superintendent’s wife worked with first responders and knew what we were up against. We were able to explain those problems and I think we have that behind us now, but it was painful for everyone, including us. We built our reputation on service and reliability. Both were beyond our control at that point.”
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch House…
Milan: It was just an unbelievable experience getting into that house. Water up to mid chest. Probably a foolish thing to do. All kinds of things can happen. The water wasn’t moving that fast, but it was touching the breaker boxes. Water and electricity! Not a good combination!”
“We finally got the cat out of there, but my phone went in the drink, so I lost all communication.”
“The next day, my wife and Lori had to get to the house, so we borrowed a canoe. We saw our brother in law struggling in the water. When we tried to get him into the canoe, he flipped it over. Now Lori’s phone is under water, too.”
That’s all she played.
“The hardest part for my wife was the piano. We had bought it for our girls in 1977. It was a baby grand. The force of the water had flipped it over and ripped off two of the legs.”
Nightmare Followed by a Miracle
“We had 3.5 feet of nasty water and sewage in the house. It finally subsided on Thursday afternoon. Then another part in the story began. It was just as unbelievable how folks came out to help.”
“The outpouring of help from the people of Kingwood, led by the churches, was amazing. With the help from strangers, we got everything torn out and the dehumidifiers going.”
Secrets of Dealing with Contractors
“Then I had to find some contractors who could get the rest done. Luckily, we deal with contractors all the time; I knew some very good ones. I hired one who builds hotels and high-end townhomes. I cut a cost-plus deal with him.”
Starting over.
“I saw that a real shortage of qualified contractors was coming, so I did everything I could to sweeten the deal, but built in safeguards for us. I gave him two houses – mine and Lori’s. I guaranteed him payment every Friday night. We made up our minds about what we wanted and didn’t change anything. All he had to do was show every day and carry on the work continuously. As a result, we had two or three subs on the job site every day and avoided a lot of the problems that others have had getting contractors to show. If guys are working, you want to pay them every Friday so that they’re back on Monday.”
Kicked to the curb by Mother Nature.
“My wife is fluent in Spanish, so we could converse with subcontractors. That was another advantage.”
Repairs Completed in Record Time, But Now…
“We got the house all done by the first of December. Right now, I’m just wrestling with the insurance guys. They think I should have been able to get it done for half. But it’s unreasonable to look back and say that.”
“The IRS says you should be able to take $104 per square foot, no questions asked. Shopping for the best price in town is probably not the best idea at a time like this.”
Bob: “How long did it take the bank to get back to normal?”
Lori: “Other banks were having trouble getting personnel in. But after Labor Day, most of our staff was able to get into the bank. I remember coming to work Tuesday and seeing all the cars in the parking lot, and thinking, ‘Wow!’ We’d just been through a war zone…the craziest worst week of our lives. And there all of our people were!”
Milan: “We were also very fortunate that only three of our employees had flooded houses and two of those are sitting here with you.”
“The Craziest, Worst Week of Our Lives” Turns into a 3-Year Project
Bob: “How did you manage to cope with the business being down and your homes being destroyed at the same time?”
Lori: “You go into survival mode. You rely on others. I have really good managers. They just stepped up, personally and professionally. They knew what we were going through.”
“We lost everything. Now looking back…I wonder how we did get through it. It was just one day at a time.”
More net worth at the curb
“We knew good contractors and had great relationships with them. Not everyone had that luxury. When I drive down my street now, it breaks my heart. I still see dumpsters in the driveways and portacans…all of it. They’re still far away from getting their houses back together again.”
Bob: “What percentage of your street is finished remodeling?”
Lori: Maybe 20%. At least 80% are still not back in.”
Milan: “We have 42 houses in our part of Kingwood Lakes; only one escaped flooding. There aren’t ten that are completely finished restoring. You see lots of travel trailers. I’ve said all along that this is a three-year project and my opinion hasn’t changed.”
Fighting the Adjusters
Bob: “What’s the most common problem people have?”
Milan: “They’re all struggling with the insurance adjusters. Each adjuster sees things differently.”
“One friend’s adjuster told him that $70/sf was a starting point and that if you have cabinetry involved, you’re up to $100/sf. That matches up to what the IRS said. But some of these adjusting companies are trying to be too safe, in my opinion. They split everything up into a unit-pricing process that takes waaaay too long.”
Counter to counter, but not express
“When a cost-plus contractor shows up, he’s going to give you a quote for labor and all the receipts for materials. He’s not going to break out trim costs or caulking per square inch! Our first adjuster’s report was 40 PAGES!”
“By comparison, when our bank makes loans on a $700K house, the builder gives us pro formacosts on ONE sheet of paper. You can NOT analyze a house on a per-square-inch basis. These guys just don’t get it.”
“The other thing that has happened is that prices have all escalated by 30%.”
The Value of a Banker Who Knows Your Business
Bob: “Do you have any customers that were forced out of business by Harvey?”
Milan: “No. But many were affected.”
“We had a Holiday Inn Express in Rockport that was severely damaged. But the regulators were very proactive and encouraged banks to give people time, suspend payments, look for ways to assist them.”
“We had a dozen clients in different places that were badly affected, and we’ve worked with them.”
The Hardest Hit Clients Didn’t Have Flood Insurance
Lori: “The hardest hit were clients without flood insurance. They weren’t required to have it.
Not in a flood plain, you know!”
Milan: “We’re one of the top ten SBA lenders in this district. We’re up there with Chase and Wells. SBA requires flood insurance if you are in the 100-year flood plain. But the people that were the most affected were not in the 100-year flood plain and so consequently, they didn’t have any insurance.”
“I’ve had flood insurance for 50 years because my first house was in Bellaire. My second house was in Pearland. One time they had 35 inches in Alvin and there was no way out. We had to be rescued by helicopters down there, so when I moved to Kingwood, I insisted on flood insurance.”
Recommendations for Improving the System
Bob: “What would you change politically to help prevent another flood like Harvey?”
Milan: “Oversight needs to be regional. I think the SJRA worried too much about Lake Conroe and not enough about what would happen downstream. They need to communicate better, too. It’s incredible that guys in Memphis got the news before we did. Regional coordination and prompt notification. Those will be big parts of the answer.”
Heavy hearts and high piles: belongings on the curb, waiting for pickup
Nature Always Wins
Bob: “You work with a lot of developers. Do you have any observations about development near rivers?”
Milan: “You can’t outsmart nature. Nature always wins. We need to give Mother Nature her room.”
Posted By Bob Rehak on July 24, 2018
330 Days since Hurricane Harvey
00adminadmin2018-07-25 00:17:032018-07-25 00:30:01Milan and Lori Saunders’ Harvey Experience: “You can’t outsmart nature. Nature always wins.”
Early voting for the $2.5 billion Harris County Flood Bond Referendum begins August 8. If approved, the County could leverage that money to increase the amount available for flood mitigation. Matching funds from FEMA, HUD, the State, and other sources are available. These grants usually operate on a 75/25 or 90/10 basis, returning $3 to $9 for every dollar put up.
Local Dollars Leverage Matching Funds
If voters approve the $2.5 billion referendum, the bond funds could potentially bring in billions of additional dollars. Here is how funding for Flood Control District projects works. (For a printable PDF, click here.)
Partnership Matching Funds Available for Harris County Flood Control District Projects
Bond money can be used as “seed money” for some types of projects. It qualifies us to receive additional money in the form of grants from other partners such as the Federal Government, State, Coastal Water Authority or the City.
Federal dollars for Harvey flood mitigation efforts are available now, but may go elsewhere if we don’t act. Every city along the Gulf Coast is competing for available matching funds.
Partnership Projects: More Leverage but Less Control
Even though you may not be able to follow all the ins and outs of the diagram above, you should be able to see that many opportunities exist to extend the impact of our own dollars. That’s the good news. The downside is that when you start spending other people’s money, they want to have a say in how you spend it. It’s important that we understand risks as we move forward. To get more money, we must give up some control.
Q: How will projects in the bond proposal be selected and prioritized?
A: Harris County Commissioners Court directed Flood Control District staff to develop list of projects. This is not an exact list of projects that must be or will be built with bond proceeds. It represents a list of projects that would meet the goal of the bond election, which is to both assist with recovery after previous flooding events (including Harvey) and to make our county more resilient for the future.
High on the priority list are construction-ready projects with federal funding partners (such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency) that give the County “the most bang for its flood control buck.”
Q: Can the bond money be used for purposes other than flood risk reduction?
A: No. Under Texas law, bond funds in this election could only be used for the purpose approved by the voters. Bond funds will not be used to fund additional staff positions at the Harris County Flood Control District.
Q: Do bond proceeds have to be used for the specific projects recommended by the Flood Control District?
A: No. Voters will be asked to authorize bonds for flood damage reduction projects, but specific projects may be added to the list of potential projects in the future or projects on the list could be modified based upon public input.
However, officials can only spend bond money on projects supported by the Bond Language. Voters will not be voting on a specific project list, only on the language in the proposal.
Freeing Up Budget to Improve Maintenance
Maintenance is NOT in the bond proposal. Nevertheless, the bond could still improve maintenance in a roundabout way. Here’s how. About half of the Flood Control District’s current $120 million per year budget goes to capital expenditures. If approved, the bond would free up about $60 million currently focused on construction projects.
The other $60 million in the Flood Control District’s budget is devoted to Maintenance and Operations. It is roughly divided as follows: $30 million for salaries and overhead; $10 million for mowing; and $20 million for maintenance.
That $20 million currently devoted to maintaining ditches, bayous and streams, if added to the $60 million that is freed up, would make $80 million that could be devoted to improving maintenance. That means the District’s maintenance budget could quadruple.
Yea or Nay?
On balance, I like how the bond is shaping up and I trust the people in charge of it. I wish that the $50 million allocated for a dredging partnership project was a dedicated $50 million. Then, if the bond proposal passes, we might be able to get the Army Corps to extend the scope of their current dredging to include the giant sand bar at the mouth of the West Fork. Addressing that issue as a change order to the current contract could save years, save dollars, and reduce risk immediately.
Posted on June 23, 2018, by Bob Rehak
328 Days since Hurricane Harvey
00adminadmin2018-07-23 22:54:402018-07-23 22:56:20How County Bond Funds Could Leverage Additional Dollars
A Closer Look at Sand Issues on the East Fork of the San Jacinto
This is what East End Park used to look like – a natural gem within the nation’s fourth largest city, an urban refuge for wildlife on the East Fork, and an island of quiet enjoyed by more than 80,000 visitors per year.
Then Things Changed
After Harvey, sand and gravel dunes covered 30 acres (about 20 percent of the park’s 150 acres). The sand destroyed wetlands. Look at the wetland image three rows up in the center of the poster. Now look below. They’re the same area!
This bridge had to be excavated from several feet of sand after Harvey. It used to cross wetlands shown in the poster above.
Here’s what the trail looked like in the opposite direction before excavation.
Standing on five feet of sand deposited in East End Park wetlands
A bird’s nest ten feet up in a tree is now knee high because sand raised the ground elevation so much.
Natural or man-made disaster?
So I asked myself, where did all this sand come from? Was this just something that you have to accept when you live near a river? To find answers, I rented a helicopter and flew up the East Fork. Opposite East End Park, I saw this giant dune below, one of several along the way.
A new dune deposited during Harvey now blocks half of the East Fork opposite East End Park (upper right).
From ground level (below), you can see how tall it is – 10 to 12 feet. Some people who have climbed this dune tell me that it gets even higher back in the trees.
This new sand dune, created during Harvey is twice the height of the average human. A geologist told me that he doesn’t usually see changes this dramatic on a human time scale.
Farther up the river, I started to see what the problem might be.
A 750 acre sand mine hugs the banks of Caney Creek. Note how another giant sand bar adjacent to the mine again chokes off 50 percent of Caney Creek. Such blockages are now common.
Flying closer to the giant stockpile, I noted its height relative to trees around it. Those trees typically grow up to 100 feet tall. That water tower in the background is on Kingwood Drive.
Below, note how the road that comes up from the bottom left washed out inside of the mine.
I reviewed other areas within this mine in Google Earth. The mine measures more than 750 acres. The stockpile alone comprises 34 acres. The image below from 9/1/17 reveals severe erosion of this massive stockpile as Harvey’s floodwater’s receded.
Erosion in East Fork sand mine stockpile as Harvey’s floodwater’s receded.
Evidence Mounts: Clearer Picture Emerges
Satellite imagery below shows that no other sand mines are visible on the East Fork or its tributaries for miles around. None of the rivers or streams in this area seem to produce much. And all of those monster sand bars appear downstream. Hmmmm! Had we found the source of all that sand?
No other sand mines exist on Caney Creek. No huge sand bars show up above the mine; all appear below. Note that the sand bars represent only a tiny portion of the sand carried downstream; as in East End Park, huge volumes were deposited beneath the forest canopy and are not visible in satellite imagery.
Mine Located in Two Floodways; Living Dangerously
At this point, I had my suspicions. But TACA claims that “when rivers back up into a mine during floods” they slow down and drop their sediment in the pits. I puzzled over the phrase “back up,” especially because this mine, like virtually all others in the area, sits in a floodway. Actually, this one sits in TWO.
Half of this mine lies in two floodways as shown in this USGS flood hazard viewer. The part of the stockpile that eroded most is in the the 100 year floodplain (aqua). See right side of circle. Brown represents the 500 year flood plain and the cross-hatched area represents the floodway, which is defined as the main current of the river during a 100-year flood.
According to Harris County Flood Control on page 12 of their final report, more than 20,000 cubic feet of water per second came down Caney Creek. And the Flood Control District has no gauges on White Oak Creek, the tributary that comes from the west, so the real flow total was higher. I can’t imagine how water would “back up” into this particular mine during an event like Harvey, especially during the early stages when everything was rushing downstream fast enough to wash out a road and erode a mountain of sand.
But still, those TACA guys are the experts, right?
I needed a way of showing exactly how fast the water was flowing through this area. Since there are no gages, I looked at particle sizes deposited downstream. Science tells us that rivers pick up particles in a particular order as flow increases and accelerates.
Erosion and Deposition of Various Particle Sizes at Different Velocities.
Among the new sand dunes at East End Park, I found gravel…lots of it.
Dunes of gravel or small pebbles were also found in East End Park.
If the current during Harvey was strong enough to pick up 2.5 centimeter pebbles like the one below, it was definitely strong enough to pick up sand. You can even see sand mixed in with the pebbles if you look closely.
Pebble found at top of ten-foot mound in East End Park. It measures about 2.5 centimeters.
To deposit gravel this size, the river was moving at about 150 cm/second – fast enough to pick up EVERYTHING smaller, including clay, silt, sand, gravel and pebbles (items listed below the horizontal axis on the chart above). The flow rate was high enough to move every type of material found in the mine.
While the sand miners claim the river wasn’t moving fast enough to carry sand out of the mines, the physical evidence suggests a different story.
Sand deposits reach high up on trees and are killing many smaller trees. The sand came from somewhere. There’s one likely culprit in my opinion.
Homes Flooded on East Fork, Too
This entire sequence shows the risk of locating mines in floodways. Not just because of damage to nature, but because of danger to homes. Harris County Flood Control compiled this damage map.
1290 structures in Huffman and Kingwood flooded on the sand-clogged East Fork. See the purple and green totals right of the black line that bisects the purple. Those represent damaged structures in the East Fork watershed.
Harvey damaged 1290 Harris County structures in the East Fork watershed. Assuming an average loss of $250,000 for each structure and its contents, damage would total about $350,000,000 – one third of a billion dollars.
Recommended Next Steps
Even though no sedimentation surveys have yet been completed on the East Fork that could definitively link this sand to subsequent flooding, the Army Corps of Engineers has confirmed that similar sand blockages have contributed to flooding on the West Fork. (The Corps is currently embarking on a $70 million dredging project there…at taxpayer expense.)
My findings suggest that such a study should be done on the East Fork. Further, I believe that we need to:
Need to Strengthen TCEQ
Regarding the last point, in the five years from 2013 to 2017, the TCEQ found 619 violations at sand mining operations throughout Texas, but assessed only $506,151 in penalties. That’s about $101,000 per year and works out to an average of $817.69 per fine.
Those are my opinions on matters of public policy protected under the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP statutes of the great State of Texas. I sincerely hope that TACA can come to the table and help structure sensible mining regulations that protect the public, not just the profits of miners. I’ll talk more about what those might be in subsequent posts.
Urgency also Needed
It’s important that we start this dialog now. If the new USGS data is correct, Harvey was not a 1000-year event; USGS estimated that the flow on Caney Creek, upstream from the mine, had an annual exceedance probability of 3.3. See Page 9, Table 3, Line 32 for Gage #08070500 in their report titled “Characterization of Peak Streamflows and Flood Inundation of Selected Areas in Southeastern Texas and Southwestern Louisiana from the August and September 2017 Flood Resulting from Hurricane Harvey.” The report was produced in cooperation with FEMA.
That would make Harvey a 33-year event in this area. Impossible, you say! The flow measured upstream from the mine was only the fourth highest on record.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/25/18
331 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Milan and Lori Saunders’ Harvey Experience: “You can’t outsmart nature. Nature always wins.”
Interview by Bob Rehak
In June, I interviewed Milan Saunders, Chairman/CEO of Plains State Bank, and his daughter Lori Saunders, the bank’s COO. Both live in Kingwood Lakes with their respective families several blocks apart. I asked for this interview to learn how Harvey affected them personally and professionally, and to see whether the flood had a domino effect on other businesses beyond Houston. Spoiler alert: It did.
As we sit in a quiet corner of Amadeus, awaiting our meals, I ask Milan and Lori to start at the beginning. Both have photographic memories and brains that process information faster than computers. They begin with an almost hour-by-hour narrative of the storm’s approach. Clearly, almost a year later, the images remain vivid and painful.
It’s time to abandon ship. The Saunders household is swamped by Harvey.
Water and Plumbing Back Up
Milan: “Harvey approached the Houston area on Friday, August 25, and started dumping buckets of rain. Going into the weekend, we were tracking weather reports. On Saturday, things lightened up. Then the rains came back again. Sunday … a lot of rain. Monday … a lot of rain. By that afternoon, water was out of Lake Houston and it began to look pretty ominous. By Tuesday, water was also out of Lake Kingwood. We had only 18 inches between it and our threshold.”
Lori: “My plumbing was starting to back up on Sunday. That’s why I went over to Dad’s house.”
Milan: “Overnight, early Tuesday morning, water began to rise substantially. About 1 a.m., we wrapped the legs of our baby grand piano. In ‘94, we were spared, so I was thinking that, at worst, we would get a foot of water in the house.”
Reliving the Story While Retelling It
Milan continues the story in a series of rapid-fire images that seem to fade to black between each. “I went back to sleep. I was woken up at 6:30 in the morning. Came downstairs. At that point, I am standing in water up past my knees. I open the door and go outside. I am standing in water up to my belt. I see this rubber boat pulling in. First responders called out, ‘It’s a mandatory evacuation.’”
“I ask who they are. They say, ‘We’re firemen from Memphis, Tennessee.’ I say to myself, ‘Wait a minute!’ How did they know about it in time to get here from Memphis when I didn’t even know about it?”
Milan makes his great escape with wife and dog on a Wave Runner down Kingwood Drive
“Somehow, we managed to get our dog, a giant German Shepherd, balanced on my lap. They took us up the next street, and we got out there.”
As we delve deeper, Milan increasingly uses present tense, as though he is re-living Harvey in real time. His jaw clenches. The gets that 1000-yard stare. He is in another place and another time now.
“The next challenge is finding a place to shelter for me, my wife, my daughter, my granddaughter and grandson…which we do that afternoon.”
“I’m also worrying about the bank. We had been closed for four days already. The law says banks can’t be closed for more than three days in a row. We had already contacted our regulators to let them know that we were experiencing some really harsh difficulties.”
Never in 50 Years of Banking
“All of our employees are basically stranded. 59 is shut down. The force of water running over the highway has moved the concrete barriers on it.”
“Plains State does business far beyond Houston. We are keeping in touch with our West Texas people to help our clients out there, but our headquarters is in Humble and no one can get to it.”
“If I had had any idea this was going to happen, we would have gotten hotel rooms on the other side of the river for our employees.”
Rising tide of discontent sweeps across Kingwood
One image intrudes on another as Milan talks of his experience. He jumps from subject to subject as we nosh on our linguine.
“I lost my telephone while rescuing my granddaughter’s cat,” he says. “I lost both cars.” He begins talking in a staccato shorthand almost like he’s running down a mental checklist, a pilot evaluating options for an emergency landing. “No cars. No phone. Can’t get across the river.”
“It really made it very difficult for us to run the bank. None of our offices experienced flooding; we just couldn’t get people to the offices to move electronic files. That’s where our connections to the Fed and our core processor are.”
Lori: “A few days later, as flood waters started to subside, some folks in law enforcement told us about a way to get across the river. It was a very long way without the 59 bridge, but it worked. Some of our managers were able to get into the bank and start taking care of customers.”
Milan: “We were down five days. I’ve never experienced that in 50 years of banking.”
Bob: “Were there any repercussions for being closed five days?”
Milan: “Overall, our clients down here were very understanding. The West Texas folks didn’t understand as well. One client is a school district. They had end of month payroll to make.”
“Luckily, the superintendent’s wife worked with first responders and knew what we were up against. We were able to explain those problems and I think we have that behind us now, but it was painful for everyone, including us. We built our reputation on service and reliability. Both were beyond our control at that point.”
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch House…
Milan: It was just an unbelievable experience getting into that house. Water up to mid chest. Probably a foolish thing to do. All kinds of things can happen. The water wasn’t moving that fast, but it was touching the breaker boxes. Water and electricity! Not a good combination!”
“We finally got the cat out of there, but my phone went in the drink, so I lost all communication.”
“The next day, my wife and Lori had to get to the house, so we borrowed a canoe. We saw our brother in law struggling in the water. When we tried to get him into the canoe, he flipped it over. Now Lori’s phone is under water, too.”
That’s all she played.
“The hardest part for my wife was the piano. We had bought it for our girls in 1977. It was a baby grand. The force of the water had flipped it over and ripped off two of the legs.”
Nightmare Followed by a Miracle
“We had 3.5 feet of nasty water and sewage in the house. It finally subsided on Thursday afternoon. Then another part in the story began. It was just as unbelievable how folks came out to help.”
“The outpouring of help from the people of Kingwood, led by the churches, was amazing. With the help from strangers, we got everything torn out and the dehumidifiers going.”
Secrets of Dealing with Contractors
“Then I had to find some contractors who could get the rest done. Luckily, we deal with contractors all the time; I knew some very good ones. I hired one who builds hotels and high-end townhomes. I cut a cost-plus deal with him.”
Starting over.
“I saw that a real shortage of qualified contractors was coming, so I did everything I could to sweeten the deal, but built in safeguards for us. I gave him two houses – mine and Lori’s. I guaranteed him payment every Friday night. We made up our minds about what we wanted and didn’t change anything. All he had to do was show every day and carry on the work continuously. As a result, we had two or three subs on the job site every day and avoided a lot of the problems that others have had getting contractors to show. If guys are working, you want to pay them every Friday so that they’re back on Monday.”
Kicked to the curb by Mother Nature.
“My wife is fluent in Spanish, so we could converse with subcontractors. That was another advantage.”
Repairs Completed in Record Time, But Now…
“We got the house all done by the first of December. Right now, I’m just wrestling with the insurance guys. They think I should have been able to get it done for half. But it’s unreasonable to look back and say that.”
“The IRS says you should be able to take $104 per square foot, no questions asked. Shopping for the best price in town is probably not the best idea at a time like this.”
Bob: “How long did it take the bank to get back to normal?”
Lori: “Other banks were having trouble getting personnel in. But after Labor Day, most of our staff was able to get into the bank. I remember coming to work Tuesday and seeing all the cars in the parking lot, and thinking, ‘Wow!’ We’d just been through a war zone…the craziest worst week of our lives. And there all of our people were!”
Milan: “We were also very fortunate that only three of our employees had flooded houses and two of those are sitting here with you.”
“The Craziest, Worst Week of Our Lives” Turns into a 3-Year Project
Bob: “How did you manage to cope with the business being down and your homes being destroyed at the same time?”
Lori: “You go into survival mode. You rely on others. I have really good managers. They just stepped up, personally and professionally. They knew what we were going through.”
“We lost everything. Now looking back…I wonder how we did get through it. It was just one day at a time.”
More net worth at the curb
“We knew good contractors and had great relationships with them. Not everyone had that luxury. When I drive down my street now, it breaks my heart. I still see dumpsters in the driveways and portacans…all of it. They’re still far away from getting their houses back together again.”
Bob: “What percentage of your street is finished remodeling?”
Lori: Maybe 20%. At least 80% are still not back in.”
Milan: “We have 42 houses in our part of Kingwood Lakes; only one escaped flooding. There aren’t ten that are completely finished restoring. You see lots of travel trailers. I’ve said all along that this is a three-year project and my opinion hasn’t changed.”
Fighting the Adjusters
Bob: “What’s the most common problem people have?”
Milan: “They’re all struggling with the insurance adjusters. Each adjuster sees things differently.”
“One friend’s adjuster told him that $70/sf was a starting point and that if you have cabinetry involved, you’re up to $100/sf. That matches up to what the IRS said. But some of these adjusting companies are trying to be too safe, in my opinion. They split everything up into a unit-pricing process that takes waaaay too long.”
Counter to counter, but not express
“When a cost-plus contractor shows up, he’s going to give you a quote for labor and all the receipts for materials. He’s not going to break out trim costs or caulking per square inch! Our first adjuster’s report was 40 PAGES!”
“By comparison, when our bank makes loans on a $700K house, the builder gives us pro formacosts on ONE sheet of paper. You can NOT analyze a house on a per-square-inch basis. These guys just don’t get it.”
“The other thing that has happened is that prices have all escalated by 30%.”
The Value of a Banker Who Knows Your Business
Bob: “Do you have any customers that were forced out of business by Harvey?”
Milan: “No. But many were affected.”
“We had a Holiday Inn Express in Rockport that was severely damaged. But the regulators were very proactive and encouraged banks to give people time, suspend payments, look for ways to assist them.”
“We had a dozen clients in different places that were badly affected, and we’ve worked with them.”
The Hardest Hit Clients Didn’t Have Flood Insurance
Lori: “The hardest hit were clients without flood insurance. They weren’t required to have it.
Not in a flood plain, you know!”
Milan: “We’re one of the top ten SBA lenders in this district. We’re up there with Chase and Wells. SBA requires flood insurance if you are in the 100-year flood plain. But the people that were the most affected were not in the 100-year flood plain and so consequently, they didn’t have any insurance.”
“I’ve had flood insurance for 50 years because my first house was in Bellaire. My second house was in Pearland. One time they had 35 inches in Alvin and there was no way out. We had to be rescued by helicopters down there, so when I moved to Kingwood, I insisted on flood insurance.”
Recommendations for Improving the System
Bob: “What would you change politically to help prevent another flood like Harvey?”
Milan: “Oversight needs to be regional. I think the SJRA worried too much about Lake Conroe and not enough about what would happen downstream. They need to communicate better, too. It’s incredible that guys in Memphis got the news before we did. Regional coordination and prompt notification. Those will be big parts of the answer.”
Heavy hearts and high piles: belongings on the curb, waiting for pickup
Nature Always Wins
Bob: “You work with a lot of developers. Do you have any observations about development near rivers?”
Milan: “You can’t outsmart nature. Nature always wins. We need to give Mother Nature her room.”
Posted By Bob Rehak on July 24, 2018
330 Days since Hurricane Harvey
How County Bond Funds Could Leverage Additional Dollars
Early voting for the $2.5 billion Harris County Flood Bond Referendum begins August 8. If approved, the County could leverage that money to increase the amount available for flood mitigation. Matching funds from FEMA, HUD, the State, and other sources are available. These grants usually operate on a 75/25 or 90/10 basis, returning $3 to $9 for every dollar put up.
Local Dollars Leverage Matching Funds
If voters approve the $2.5 billion referendum, the bond funds could potentially bring in billions of additional dollars. Here is how funding for Flood Control District projects works. (For a printable PDF, click here.)
Partnership Matching Funds Available for Harris County Flood Control District Projects
Bond money can be used as “seed money” for some types of projects. It qualifies us to receive additional money in the form of grants from other partners such as the Federal Government, State, Coastal Water Authority or the City.
Partnership Projects: More Leverage but Less Control
Even though you may not be able to follow all the ins and outs of the diagram above, you should be able to see that many opportunities exist to extend the impact of our own dollars. That’s the good news. The downside is that when you start spending other people’s money, they want to have a say in how you spend it. It’s important that we understand risks as we move forward. To get more money, we must give up some control.
Q: How will projects in the bond proposal be selected and prioritized?
A: Harris County Commissioners Court directed Flood Control District staff to develop list of projects. This is not an exact list of projects that must be or will be built with bond proceeds. It represents a list of projects that would meet the goal of the bond election, which is to both assist with recovery after previous flooding events (including Harvey) and to make our county more resilient for the future.
High on the priority list are construction-ready projects with federal funding partners (such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency) that give the County “the most bang for its flood control buck.”
Q: Can the bond money be used for purposes other than flood risk reduction?
A: No. Under Texas law, bond funds in this election could only be used for the purpose approved by the voters. Bond funds will not be used to fund additional staff positions at the Harris County Flood Control District.
Q: Do bond proceeds have to be used for the specific projects recommended by the Flood Control District?
A: No. Voters will be asked to authorize bonds for flood damage reduction projects, but specific projects may be added to the list of potential projects in the future or projects on the list could be modified based upon public input.
However, officials can only spend bond money on projects supported by the Bond Language. Voters will not be voting on a specific project list, only on the language in the proposal.
Freeing Up Budget to Improve Maintenance
Maintenance is NOT in the bond proposal. Nevertheless, the bond could still improve maintenance in a roundabout way. Here’s how. About half of the Flood Control District’s current $120 million per year budget goes to capital expenditures. If approved, the bond would free up about $60 million currently focused on construction projects.
The other $60 million in the Flood Control District’s budget is devoted to Maintenance and Operations. It is roughly divided as follows: $30 million for salaries and overhead; $10 million for mowing; and $20 million for maintenance.
That $20 million currently devoted to maintaining ditches, bayous and streams, if added to the $60 million that is freed up, would make $80 million that could be devoted to improving maintenance. That means the District’s maintenance budget could quadruple.
Yea or Nay?
On balance, I like how the bond is shaping up and I trust the people in charge of it. I wish that the $50 million allocated for a dredging partnership project was a dedicated $50 million. Then, if the bond proposal passes, we might be able to get the Army Corps to extend the scope of their current dredging to include the giant sand bar at the mouth of the West Fork. Addressing that issue as a change order to the current contract could save years, save dollars, and reduce risk immediately.
Posted on June 23, 2018, by Bob Rehak
328 Days since Hurricane Harvey