On August 25th, the anniversary of Hurricane Harvey, Harris County residents will vote on a $2.5 billion flood bond. The County has not yet made clear what mitigation measures would be in the bond proposal. Hence, my personal wish list. Not all items on the list below are suitable for a bond, but could still help mitigate flooding. I’m including them here to have them all in one place. You may have other ideas. Let’s start a public dialog. Please contact me through this website or on Facebook with your opinions. I will collect and publish all credible ideas on behalf of the community.
Causes of Flooding in the Upper Lake Houston Area
Before we start, it’s important to note that the main type of flooding in our area is riverine. Humble, Kingwood, Atascocita and Huffman sit at the confluence of two main forks of the San Jacinto River.
Together, the East and West Forks drain more than a thousand square miles upstream through smaller tributaries. Those include Spring Creak, Cypress Creek and Lake Creek on the West Fork; and Caney Creek, Peach Creek and Luce Bayou on the East Fork.
Hurricane Harvey brought an estimated 400,000 cubic feet of water per second (cfs) down those tributaries to Lake Houston. The release from the dam at Lake Conroe at the peak of the storm was 79,141 cfs.
Where Water Came From During Harvey
That 79,141 cfs was approximately one third of 236,000 cfs coming down the heavily populated area between Kingwood, Humble and Atascocita where most of the damage occurred at the peak of the storm.
1) Add upstream retention to reduce the amount of water coming downstream at peaks. Such retention would have to be built in unpopulated areas. That limits possibilities, however, it does not eliminate them. Lake Creek, Peach Creek and/or the East Fork of the San Jacinto all contain natural areas that could be considered as candidates. Ideally, the amount of extra detention would at least be sufficient to offset releases from the dam at Lake Conroe.
2) Regularlydredge the East Fork, West Fork, and drainage ditches. The frequency should be at least every 5 years, the interval recommended in 2000 by the Brown & Root Regional Flood Protection Study (page E-9). Sand mines continue to send huge volumes of sand downstream with every flood. The sand blocks drainage ditches and restricts the cross section of the river. That creates higher-than-expected flooding on relatively small rains. Regular dredging does not necessarily have to occur at public cost. Tax incentives could encourage sand mining companies to dredge the river at their own expense. They could sell the recovered material to help recoup costs. However, this would have to be done under government supervision to discourage excessive dredging that undermines river banks.
3) Add more flood gates to Lake Houston. This would allow the City to release water earlier and faster during major storms. This could create extra capacity in the lake to absorb flood water. Lake Houston has two small floodgates, but they have one tenth the capacity of the gates at Lake Conroe. In combination with the sand deposits mentioned above, this can create a bottleneck. (Note: the Harris County bond could not help with flood gates because the gates would be City of Houston assets. The City is currently securing funding for this project through the Texas Department of Emergency Management, FEMA and the Federal Government.)
4) Improve coordination/communication between the people who control dams at Lake Conroe and Lake Houston, and the public. This could improve public safety two ways. First, when the discharge capabilities of both lakes are balanced, they could release water in advance of major storms as a flood mitigation strategy. (Currently, SJRA fears that releasing water before storms could overload the downstream watershed and cause the very flooding that a pre-release strategy is designed to prevent. This is a complex issue.) Second, during Harvey, actual release rates seemed to lag public announcements, creating a false sense of security among residents downstream. Better communication could have given residents downstream time to evacuate in an orderly fashion and save their most valuable belongings.
5) Link real-time inundation mapping (currently being developed) to expected Lake Conroe release rates. Harris County is already working on a real-time inundation mapping system. This system will model flooding down to the block level. It would enable people to see how fast flood waters were rising in their neighborhoods, help them determine when to evacuate, and identify safe escape routes. Now imagine making this system available to the engineers who control the Lake Conroe dam. ALSO imagine adding features that enable them to preview and test the impact of different release strategies. For instance, “How many homes downstream will be flooded at different release rates? Which strategy would flood the fewest homes? How much water can we safely release without flooding any homes? If we have to flood homes, who should we warn? How much time will they have to evacuate?”
6)Add sensors and gages throughout the watershed to create a more detailed picture of what is headed inbound toward Lake Conroe and Lake Houston during severe events. Such sensors and gages would support the preview capabilities outlined in point #5 above.
7) Improve sand mine operations to reduce the amount of sand coming downstream. I would like to see a government/industry/public panel created (with public hearings) to review sand mine operations and suggest improvements. The objective would be to identify affordable best practices that could reduce sand losses, minimize dredging costs, and help protect the public. This could also reduce turbidity which would improve fishing and recreation while reducing water treatment costs. I can think of four potential strategies off the top of my head: a) replanting areas no longer actively being mined to reduce erosion, b) building walls around stockpiles that protect them from floods, c) strengthening dikes so they don’t collapse, and d) giving the river more room to expand during floods. In regard to the latter, the dikes are currently built right at the river’s edge, leaving no room for the river to expand before it floods the mines.
Sand mines by Sorters Road in Montgomery County west of Kingwood. Note how the placement of their dikes give the West Fork no room to expand during a flood. This contributes to dike collapse, mine inundation and loss of sand.
8) Temporarily lower the level of Lake Conroe. Lower the level up to one foot during the rainiest months in spring and up to two feet during the peak of hurricane season. While two feet may sound draconian to some Lake Conroe residents, on average, it’s really only 4.8 inches below the amount usually lost though evaporation during September. This is the only buffer that the upper Lake Houston area can have against flooding until we implement other mitigation measures. The SJRA board has already approved this proposal, but the City of Houston and the Texas Council on Environmental Quality have not yet done so. The Lake Conroe Association has vowed to fight a two-foot lowering.
9)Create more public green spaces near the river. I would like to see groups such as the Bayou Land Conservancy work with cities, counties and the state to buy up undeveloped and abandoned land along the river. They could then put conservation easements on it to help protect us all from future flooding. Keeping that land natural would reduce runoff; provide a buffer between homes and harm; preserve nature and wildlife; improve water quality; and create more recreational opportunities.
10) Improve communication during power outages. We need a way to warn people when power is knocked out during a storm, cell towers are overloaded, and people are sleeping. Simply publishing information is not enough if people cannot receive it. Perhaps we need sirens linked to back up generators, like those used to warn people of tornadoes throughout most of the midwest.
What are Your Ideas?
Please use the contact page on this web site to send me your ideas. I will add them to this list and present it to city, county, state, and river authority officials. This area probably has more geoscientists and engineers per square foot than anywhere in the world. Please help. Sound off. Let your voice be heard. Let’s show the world we can lick this problem together. If you wish, I will protect your privacy by publishing your thoughts anonymously.
Posted April 20, 2018, by Bob Rehak
Day 264 since Hurricane Harvey
00adminadmin2018-05-20 13:06:412018-05-21 12:42:18A Personal Flood-Control Wish List For the Lake Houston Area
At its board meeting last month, the San Jacinto River Authority (SJRA) voted to temporarily lower Lake Conroe. This temporary lowering would only be by one foot in the rainiest months of spring and up to two feet during the peak of hurricane season, late August and September. However, due to seasonal evaporation, the amount of the actual lowering would most likely amount to 4.8 inches in September. Assuming this is an average year, that’s just 20% of the 2 feet previously anticipated.
The temporary lowering of the lake level would provide a welcome buffer against flooding for Humble and Kingwood residents, yet has sparked a blizzard of backlash from the Lake Conroe Association.
The Lake Conroe Association has said it will accept a temporary 1-foot lowering, but not 2-feet. Read the full text of the open letter by the Association’s president. Their president asserts that that extra foot will reduce property values, hurt commerce and undermine tourism. He repeatedly refers to the temporary measure as an attempt to turn Lake Conroe into a flood-control lake, rather than a water supply lake. He has vowed to take the fight to Austin, the Texas Council on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the City of Houston. Here’s the kicker.
Nature already lowers the lake through evaporation during the peak of hurricane season – an average of more than 19 inches in September. Therefore, the Lake Conroe Association is not really fighting about two full feet, or even an extra foot; they’re fighting about a reduction that would be just 4.8 inches if this is an average year. Only in one year out of the last 18 has the average level of Lake Conroe exceeded 201 feet in September; that was last year after Harvey.
Bill Fowler, Co-chair of Lake Houston Area Flood Prevention Initiative, researched seasonal fluctuations of Lake Conroe due to evaporation. He found that the lake normally goes down during hurricane season, often by much more than a foot. See the table below taken from USGS data. The 18-year averages for August and September, the two months in question, are:
August = 199.6
September = 199.4
USGS data showing the average monthly levels of Lake Conroe for the last 18 years.
Four-tenths of a foot equals just 4.8 inches.
4.8 inches will cause property values to collapse? 4.8 inches is going to make or break marinas? 4.8 inches will ruin tourism? The temporary lowering would not even last the entire two months.
Below is the exact proposal, with details supplied by Jace Houston, general manager of SJRA. It must still be approved by the City of Houston and the Texas Council on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).
Note that SJRA wouldn’t start lowering beyond one foot until August 15 and wouldn’t get down to the target level until September 1.
Also note that the temporary lowering is relative to the level SJRA tries to maintain – 201 feet above mean sea level. It does NOT begin at the actual lake level which is, on average, 199.4 feet above MSL in September.
Details of Temporary Lowering of Lake Conroe
As a point of reference, the normal pool level of Lake Conroe is 201’ above mean sea level (msl).
Spring season – April 1 through May 31.
Starting on April 1, gradually reduce to and maintain the level of Lake Conroe at 200’ msl (one foot below normal pool).
Starting on June 1, begin to capture flows to restore normal lake elevation.
Fall season – August 1 through September 30.
Starting on August 1, gradually reduce the level of Lake Conroe with a goal of reaching 200’ msl (one foot below normal pool) by August 15.
After August 15, continue gradually lowering the level of Lake Conroe with a goal of reaching (and maintaining) 199’ msl (two feet below normal pool) by August 31.
Starting October 1, begin to capture flows to restore normal lake elevation.
If the lake level has already dropped to the target elevation just due to evaporation, no releases would be made.
If a storm enters the forecast while releases are being made to lower the lake level, releases would be stopped and the river allowed to drain out until rainfall is out of the forecast.
The Lake Conroe association is really only being asked to give up the difference between 199 msl and whatever the lake level is on August 15. The full reduction would not be reached until September 1 and the lake would fill again beginning October 1.
Note that any temporary, seasonal lowering would only last until downstream mitigation projects can be implemented. For instance, the Army Corps of Engineers should begin a dredging project in June that will remove the equivalent of approximately two and half Astrodomes worth of sand from the West Fork between Humble and Kingwood. That sand currently blocks the river and drainage ditches, causing higher-than-normal flooding with modest rains.
The Lake Conroe Association speaks for its members, but not all Lake Conroe residents. Many of the lake’s residents also flooded during Harvey and have indicated they would welcome a temporary reduction in lake level, as they too struggle to rebuild their lives and homes.
The Lake Houston Area Grass Roots Flood Prevention Initiative has invited LCA’s president to see the river siltation and devastation in this area caused by Harvey and the Lake Conroe release of 79,000 cubic feet per second. He has accepted. Let’s hope that what he sees changes his desire to fight a measure that could help so many people.
Posted on May 18, 2018 by Bob Rehak
262 days since Hurricane Harvey
00adminadmin2018-05-17 22:42:382020-01-17 10:09:10Proposal to Temporarily Lower Lake Conroe Stirs Fight with Lake Conroe Association Over Likely 4.8 Inches
Amy Slaughter, her husband, two kids, a dog and a rabbit lived in a picturesque one-story house…until Hurricane Harvey. For the last eight months, she has lived with her husband and daughter in a trailer in their driveway while they struggle to rebuild their house. Their college-age son now lives with in-laws; it saves space in the trailer.
Home, Home on the Driveway! The Slaughter family has been living in a trailer for almost 9 months as they try to restore their home.
As I interview Amy in a local restaurant, she orders a root beer. She needs it, she says, to settle her stomach. She’s just come from court and is trying to squeeze me in before a conference call. As we talk, she constantly checks her phone for messages from contractors, architects and engineers. Such is the life of a professional mother in the Post-Harvey Reconstruction Era.
Matching shoes! Life is good!
As I listen to her tell me her story, I marvel at how energetic and positive she sounds. No doubt, this is a by-product of finally having found matching shoes and a working toaster oven.
“During the first days of the storm, we really weren’t worried,” says Slaughter. “Lake Conroe was beginning to release water, but there was no visible impact.”
“Ironically, relatives on Lake Conroe called us and said, ‘They’re releasing water from the dam up here and you have no idea how much!’ It was much more than the SJRA’s web site was showing. Evidently, the updates were way behind. But we still weren’t worried because we didn’t flood in 1994.”
“By noon, we began to think differently. We took three of our cars to Kingwood Park High School, just to be safe. My family talked me out of loading our computers into the cars because they thought someone would steal them. Big mistake. Everything I do is filed electronically with the courts. All the files on my laptop, memory cards, my home server … everything … was lost!”
“Our neighbors across the street are about a foot lower than we are. The creek behind them started to rise during the morning of the 28th. We went over to help them move their furniture upstairs. By 6 p.m., we had moved everything we could and water started to creep into their house.”
“On the news, they kept saying they were expecting the river to crest, but it didn’t; it kept rising. So we were caught off guard.”
“Then around midnight of the 28th, water began to creep into our house.” She looks whimsically inward at herself and giggles.
The Great Solo Cup Caper
“What?” I ask.
“We thought we might get only a couple inches, so we put solo cups under the legs of our wooden tables to protect them!” She smiles; You have to admire a woman who can laugh at disaster. Eventually, her home took on four feet of water.
The Slaughter’s gutted interior.
“We put chairs, computers, photo albums, and other junk up on tables and chests without realizing that everything we put up high would float and flip.”
The Pink Flamingo Flotilla
She laughs again as she flits from memory to random memory. “We evacuated as soon as the water started coming in the house. We brought our dog with us. But we left the rabbit in a cage up on the dining room table. When the water kept rising, I told my husband, ‘You have to get the rabbit.’”
“He and the dear friend who rescued us took an umbrella and waded back to the house through chest-deep water. Our rabbit was floating high above the table in her cage. They floated her cage right out. Other belongings were rescued on a giant pink flamingo. Most people used john boats; we used a pink flamingo from our pool.”
Amy Slaughter shows how high the water reached in her entry way.
Then her mood turns somber again. “Once we rescued the rabbit, we realized we had at least four feet of water in our house. We were pretty much in shock.”
“What did you lose?” I ask.
“Furniture-wise and computer-wise, we lost everything. Wedding pictures, family albums, even the digital stuff on thumb drives. It’s all gone. But everybody is safe, nobody got hurt.”
“We were able to save most of our clothing with Pine Sol and Clorox. We saved most of the dishes. Ironically goblets levitated out of my grandmother’s china cabinet and floated all over the house. We found them down the hall, in different rooms. Everywhere. Standing upright.”
“I’ll never leave this place.”
“Some friends suggested that we go to their home on Lake Livingston. It took three times longer than normal, but when we got there, we could get on the phone with our insurance company and FEMA. Watching all the news coverage from Livingston was terrifying. It was hard to see that and not be here.”
“When the river receded, we came back. We wanted to get into the house as quickly as we could. We lived with nearby relatives while we started gutting our house.”
“I didn’t cry for two weeks. I felt strongly that I couldn’t tell my children, ‘It’s just stuff,’ and not live by the motto myself.”
“When I got in there, I went from an attitude of looking at ‘what was lost’ to ‘what we could save.’ That really helped me get through the experience of gutting the house.”
“Everything in our home was sentimental. We had a lot of antiques we inherited. My grandmother grew up destitute. It killed me to put her sewing machine out at the curb, knowing how many dresses she had made for us growing up. To watch it rot there for three weeks was heart wrenching.”
“It was unbelievable, though, to be surrounded by people who came out of the woodwork to help. In Livingston, I was thinking, ‘Where can we live?’ But during the gutting of our house, people just came up and offered to help. Everyone pitched in. Strangers. Friends. Relatives. Customers. Clients. They brought food. They brought tools. And they didn’t ask for anything. After that, I thought to myself, ‘I’ll never leave Kingwood.’”
A Court Appearance Reminiscent of “My Cousin Vinny”
“Then the exhaustion hit. My husband and I were both still trying to work. I had court dates. My clothing was all over Kingwood. At cleaners. With me. With my mother in law. It was pretty funny. The first time I went to court, I showed up in a denim skirt. I approached the bailiff and said, I apologize ahead of time to the court. We got flooded and I don’t know where any of my clothes are.” Luckily, Slaughter had a judge who was more understanding than the one in the movie.
“Home, Home on the Driveway”
“Currently, we live in a travel trailer. We had looked for homes, apartments and hotels to rent, but everything was booked up. Friends opened their homes to us, but we wanted to stay near the house to deal with repairs. The trailer is not big enough for all of us; my son has to live with my sister in law.”
“The trailer is not like living in a drum; it’s like living in a drum SET,” Slaughter jokes. “When it rains, you hear all kinds of sounds. The rain makes one sound. The pine needles brushing up against the trailer make another. And then there’s the occasional cymbal crash when a pine cone hits the roof.”
“We store our clothes in the garage. It’s the mother of all walk-in closets right now.”
The mother of all walk in closets…Amy Slaughter’s garage.
“How do you cook?” I ask.
“The trailer does have a microwave. We have a grill with a burner on it. And we have a hot plate and a toaster oven. But mostly we don’t cook.”
Shrinking an Inch a Day
I shake my head, thinking back to college. I could handle life in a trailer then. Now, I’m not so sure. Amy Slaughter seems only slightly troubled, though.
“It’s not bad if you’re on vacation, but after eight months, it’s kind of getting old. At first you’re so grateful to have it that you overlook the inconveniences. Then after about a month, your thoughts start to go in the opposite direction. It feels like it’s shrinking an inch a day.” I nod; I have a pair of jeans like that.
Camp Chairs and an Air Mattress for Watching TV
“Now that the house is dried out, I’m starting to use it as a workshop to restore my grandmother’s furniture,” says Amy Slaughter. “We have a back porch. We put a TV out there. We have camp chairs and an air mattress for watching the TV. That’s really our living room. But it’s getting hot now. So we may be spending more time in the trailer.”
Third-World Living
“The shower in the trailer is about the size of a bucket. It’s functional and would work. But it’s tiny, so we shower in the house. One of the bathrooms had a shower where we only tore out the glass and the backside of two walls. We put tarps along the wood studs to hold the water in and propped up the one wall with a wire shelving unit and bungee cords. It’s definitely Third-World living.”
The Slaughter shower. Makeshift, but still bigger than their trailer’s shower.
I think to myself, “This lady wins awards for creativity, but I doubt she will pass the plumbing inspection.”
“Purchasing the House We Almost Paid Off.”
I ask how Harvey affected Amy Slaughter’s family financially. Without missing a beat, she says, “We get the privilege of purchasing the house we had almost paid off.” I ask for an explanation. “Our options were: sell and move; put it right back together again; or build up. We didn’t want to move. And we didn’t want to flood … ever again. So we decided to build up. But contractors told us it would be less expensive to wipe the slab and start over than build on top of what we had.”
“How much longer will it take?” I ask.
“Finding a contractor to do the whole thing is difficult. Everybody is booked. We’re in a financial quandary. Flood insurance will only go so far. It will replace what we had, but not what we feel we need to build to be safe. Before this, we had a house that never flooded and we want to get back to that.”
“What are your biggest concerns at the moment?” I ask.
Concerns Looking Forward
“There’s a concern that we won’t be able to sell the house. How many people want a one-story house where you have to climb the stairs to get in?”
“I’m also afraid that Kingwood will be considered a lost cause at some point by politicians. You’ve seen it happen with Forest Cove. ‘Oh, that area floods now, so we should just buy out the owners and wipe it all out.’”
“Meanwhile, you have developers who are buying golf courses, like Forest Cove’s. I’ve heard it was bought and is about to be turned into homesites. That scares me. They’re going to build up higher and that’s just going to send water toward the rest of us. If the politicians don’t start limiting development like that, it will turn the rest of us into a financial sink hole.”
“If you could say one thing to the mayor, what would it be?”
Amy Slaughter pauses a long time, then…
“Come try to sleep through a rain storm in my travel trailer!”
“I worry whether I should put pontoons it,” she says doing her best Sarah Silverman imitation. Then seriously, “It won’t take a Harvey at this point to flood Kingwood again. I know they are committed to dredging the river, but the reality is they haven’t solidified any workable plan yet.”
And with that, Amy Slaughter excuses herself and sprints off to her conference call.
A Personal Flood-Control Wish List For the Lake Houston Area
On August 25th, the anniversary of Hurricane Harvey, Harris County residents will vote on a $2.5 billion flood bond. The County has not yet made clear what mitigation measures would be in the bond proposal. Hence, my personal wish list. Not all items on the list below are suitable for a bond, but could still help mitigate flooding. I’m including them here to have them all in one place. You may have other ideas. Let’s start a public dialog. Please contact me through this website or on Facebook with your opinions. I will collect and publish all credible ideas on behalf of the community.
Causes of Flooding in the Upper Lake Houston Area
Before we start, it’s important to note that the main type of flooding in our area is riverine. Humble, Kingwood, Atascocita and Huffman sit at the confluence of two main forks of the San Jacinto River.
Together, the East and West Forks drain more than a thousand square miles upstream through smaller tributaries. Those include Spring Creak, Cypress Creek and Lake Creek on the West Fork; and Caney Creek, Peach Creek and Luce Bayou on the East Fork.
Hurricane Harvey brought an estimated 400,000 cubic feet of water per second (cfs) down those tributaries to Lake Houston. The release from the dam at Lake Conroe at the peak of the storm was 79,141 cfs.
Where Water Came From During Harvey
That 79,141 cfs was approximately one third of 236,000 cfs coming down the heavily populated area between Kingwood, Humble and Atascocita where most of the damage occurred at the peak of the storm.
Both the West Fork and East Forks contain massive sand mines that were inundated by Harvey. As the photos elsewhere on this website show, those floodwaters swept up sand, carried it downstream, and deposited it at choke points that now create higher-than-expected floods on lower-than-normal rainfalls.
My Personal Flood-Remediation Wish List
1) Add upstream retention to reduce the amount of water coming downstream at peaks. Such retention would have to be built in unpopulated areas. That limits possibilities, however, it does not eliminate them. Lake Creek, Peach Creek and/or the East Fork of the San Jacinto all contain natural areas that could be considered as candidates. Ideally, the amount of extra detention would at least be sufficient to offset releases from the dam at Lake Conroe.
7) Improve sand mine operations to reduce the amount of sand coming downstream. I would like to see a government/industry/public panel created (with public hearings) to review sand mine operations and suggest improvements. The objective would be to identify affordable best practices that could reduce sand losses, minimize dredging costs, and help protect the public. This could also reduce turbidity which would improve fishing and recreation while reducing water treatment costs. I can think of four potential strategies off the top of my head: a) replanting areas no longer actively being mined to reduce erosion, b) building walls around stockpiles that protect them from floods, c) strengthening dikes so they don’t collapse, and d) giving the river more room to expand during floods. In regard to the latter, the dikes are currently built right at the river’s edge, leaving no room for the river to expand before it floods the mines.
Sand mines by Sorters Road in Montgomery County west of Kingwood. Note how the placement of their dikes give the West Fork no room to expand during a flood. This contributes to dike collapse, mine inundation and loss of sand.
8) Temporarily lower the level of Lake Conroe. Lower the level up to one foot during the rainiest months in spring and up to two feet during the peak of hurricane season. While two feet may sound draconian to some Lake Conroe residents, on average, it’s really only 4.8 inches below the amount usually lost though evaporation during September. This is the only buffer that the upper Lake Houston area can have against flooding until we implement other mitigation measures. The SJRA board has already approved this proposal, but the City of Houston and the Texas Council on Environmental Quality have not yet done so. The Lake Conroe Association has vowed to fight a two-foot lowering.
9) Create more public green spaces near the river. I would like to see groups such as the Bayou Land Conservancy work with cities, counties and the state to buy up undeveloped and abandoned land along the river. They could then put conservation easements on it to help protect us all from future flooding. Keeping that land natural would reduce runoff; provide a buffer between homes and harm; preserve nature and wildlife; improve water quality; and create more recreational opportunities.
10) Improve communication during power outages. We need a way to warn people when power is knocked out during a storm, cell towers are overloaded, and people are sleeping. Simply publishing information is not enough if people cannot receive it. Perhaps we need sirens linked to back up generators, like those used to warn people of tornadoes throughout most of the midwest.
What are Your Ideas?
Please use the contact page on this web site to send me your ideas. I will add them to this list and present it to city, county, state, and river authority officials. This area probably has more geoscientists and engineers per square foot than anywhere in the world. Please help. Sound off. Let your voice be heard. Let’s show the world we can lick this problem together. If you wish, I will protect your privacy by publishing your thoughts anonymously.
Posted April 20, 2018, by Bob Rehak
Day 264 since Hurricane Harvey
Proposal to Temporarily Lower Lake Conroe Stirs Fight with Lake Conroe Association Over Likely 4.8 Inches
At its board meeting last month, the San Jacinto River Authority (SJRA) voted to temporarily lower Lake Conroe. This temporary lowering would only be by one foot in the rainiest months of spring and up to two feet during the peak of hurricane season, late August and September. However, due to seasonal evaporation, the amount of the actual lowering would most likely amount to 4.8 inches in September. Assuming this is an average year, that’s just 20% of the 2 feet previously anticipated.
The temporary lowering of the lake level would provide a welcome buffer against flooding for Humble and Kingwood residents, yet has sparked a blizzard of backlash from the Lake Conroe Association.
The Lake Conroe Association has said it will accept a temporary 1-foot lowering, but not 2-feet. Read the full text of the open letter by the Association’s president. Their president asserts that that extra foot will reduce property values, hurt commerce and undermine tourism. He repeatedly refers to the temporary measure as an attempt to turn Lake Conroe into a flood-control lake, rather than a water supply lake. He has vowed to take the fight to Austin, the Texas Council on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the City of Houston. Here’s the kicker.
Bill Fowler, Co-chair of Lake Houston Area Flood Prevention Initiative, researched seasonal fluctuations of Lake Conroe due to evaporation. He found that the lake normally goes down during hurricane season, often by much more than a foot. See the table below taken from USGS data. The 18-year averages for August and September, the two months in question, are:
USGS data showing the average monthly levels of Lake Conroe for the last 18 years.
Four-tenths of a foot equals just 4.8 inches.
Below is the exact proposal, with details supplied by Jace Houston, general manager of SJRA. It must still be approved by the City of Houston and the Texas Council on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).
Note that SJRA wouldn’t start lowering beyond one foot until August 15 and wouldn’t get down to the target level until September 1.
Also note that the temporary lowering is relative to the level SJRA tries to maintain – 201 feet above mean sea level. It does NOT begin at the actual lake level which is, on average, 199.4 feet above MSL in September.
Details of Temporary Lowering of Lake Conroe
The Lake Conroe association is really only being asked to give up the difference between 199 msl and whatever the lake level is on August 15. The full reduction would not be reached until September 1 and the lake would fill again beginning October 1.
Note that any temporary, seasonal lowering would only last until downstream mitigation projects can be implemented. For instance, the Army Corps of Engineers should begin a dredging project in June that will remove the equivalent of approximately two and half Astrodomes worth of sand from the West Fork between Humble and Kingwood. That sand currently blocks the river and drainage ditches, causing higher-than-normal flooding with modest rains.
The Lake Conroe Association speaks for its members, but not all Lake Conroe residents. Many of the lake’s residents also flooded during Harvey and have indicated they would welcome a temporary reduction in lake level, as they too struggle to rebuild their lives and homes.
The Lake Houston Area Grass Roots Flood Prevention Initiative has invited LCA’s president to see the river siltation and devastation in this area caused by Harvey and the Lake Conroe release of 79,000 cubic feet per second. He has accepted. Let’s hope that what he sees changes his desire to fight a measure that could help so many people.
Posted on May 18, 2018 by Bob Rehak
262 days since Hurricane Harvey
Amy Slaughter’s Hurricane Harvey Experience
Amy Slaughter, her husband, two kids, a dog and a rabbit lived in a picturesque one-story house…until Hurricane Harvey. For the last eight months, she has lived with her husband and daughter in a trailer in their driveway while they struggle to rebuild their house. Their college-age son now lives with in-laws; it saves space in the trailer.
Home, Home on the Driveway! The Slaughter family has been living in a trailer for almost 9 months as they try to restore their home.
As I interview Amy in a local restaurant, she orders a root beer. She needs it, she says, to settle her stomach. She’s just come from court and is trying to squeeze me in before a conference call. As we talk, she constantly checks her phone for messages from contractors, architects and engineers. Such is the life of a professional mother in the Post-Harvey Reconstruction Era.
Matching shoes! Life is good!
As I listen to her tell me her story, I marvel at how energetic and positive she sounds. No doubt, this is a by-product of finally having found matching shoes and a working toaster oven.
“During the first days of the storm, we really weren’t worried,” says Slaughter. “Lake Conroe was beginning to release water, but there was no visible impact.”
“Ironically, relatives on Lake Conroe called us and said, ‘They’re releasing water from the dam up here and you have no idea how much!’ It was much more than the SJRA’s web site was showing. Evidently, the updates were way behind. But we still weren’t worried because we didn’t flood in 1994.”
“By noon, we began to think differently. We took three of our cars to Kingwood Park High School, just to be safe. My family talked me out of loading our computers into the cars because they thought someone would steal them. Big mistake. Everything I do is filed electronically with the courts. All the files on my laptop, memory cards, my home server … everything … was lost!”
“Our neighbors across the street are about a foot lower than we are. The creek behind them started to rise during the morning of the 28th. We went over to help them move their furniture upstairs. By 6 p.m., we had moved everything we could and water started to creep into their house.”
“On the news, they kept saying they were expecting the river to crest, but it didn’t; it kept rising. So we were caught off guard.”
“Then around midnight of the 28th, water began to creep into our house.” She looks whimsically inward at herself and giggles.
The Great Solo Cup Caper
“What?” I ask.
“We thought we might get only a couple inches, so we put solo cups under the legs of our wooden tables to protect them!” She smiles; You have to admire a woman who can laugh at disaster. Eventually, her home took on four feet of water.
The Slaughter’s gutted interior.
“We put chairs, computers, photo albums, and other junk up on tables and chests without realizing that everything we put up high would float and flip.”
The Pink Flamingo Flotilla
She laughs again as she flits from memory to random memory. “We evacuated as soon as the water started coming in the house. We brought our dog with us. But we left the rabbit in a cage up on the dining room table. When the water kept rising, I told my husband, ‘You have to get the rabbit.’”
“He and the dear friend who rescued us took an umbrella and waded back to the house through chest-deep water. Our rabbit was floating high above the table in her cage. They floated her cage right out. Other belongings were rescued on a giant pink flamingo. Most people used john boats; we used a pink flamingo from our pool.”
Amy Slaughter shows how high the water reached in her entry way.
Then her mood turns somber again. “Once we rescued the rabbit, we realized we had at least four feet of water in our house. We were pretty much in shock.”
“What did you lose?” I ask.
“Furniture-wise and computer-wise, we lost everything. Wedding pictures, family albums, even the digital stuff on thumb drives. It’s all gone. But everybody is safe, nobody got hurt.”
“We were able to save most of our clothing with Pine Sol and Clorox. We saved most of the dishes. Ironically goblets levitated out of my grandmother’s china cabinet and floated all over the house. We found them down the hall, in different rooms. Everywhere. Standing upright.”
“I’ll never leave this place.”
“Some friends suggested that we go to their home on Lake Livingston. It took three times longer than normal, but when we got there, we could get on the phone with our insurance company and FEMA. Watching all the news coverage from Livingston was terrifying. It was hard to see that and not be here.”
“When the river receded, we came back. We wanted to get into the house as quickly as we could. We lived with nearby relatives while we started gutting our house.”
“When I got in there, I went from an attitude of looking at ‘what was lost’ to ‘what we could save.’ That really helped me get through the experience of gutting the house.”
“Everything in our home was sentimental. We had a lot of antiques we inherited. My grandmother grew up destitute. It killed me to put her sewing machine out at the curb, knowing how many dresses she had made for us growing up. To watch it rot there for three weeks was heart wrenching.”
“It was unbelievable, though, to be surrounded by people who came out of the woodwork to help. In Livingston, I was thinking, ‘Where can we live?’ But during the gutting of our house, people just came up and offered to help. Everyone pitched in. Strangers. Friends. Relatives. Customers. Clients. They brought food. They brought tools. And they didn’t ask for anything. After that, I thought to myself, ‘I’ll never leave Kingwood.’”
A Court Appearance Reminiscent of “My Cousin Vinny”
“Then the exhaustion hit. My husband and I were both still trying to work. I had court dates. My clothing was all over Kingwood. At cleaners. With me. With my mother in law. It was pretty funny. The first time I went to court, I showed up in a denim skirt. I approached the bailiff and said, I apologize ahead of time to the court. We got flooded and I don’t know where any of my clothes are.” Luckily, Slaughter had a judge who was more understanding than the one in the movie.
“Home, Home on the Driveway”
“Currently, we live in a travel trailer. We had looked for homes, apartments and hotels to rent, but everything was booked up. Friends opened their homes to us, but we wanted to stay near the house to deal with repairs. The trailer is not big enough for all of us; my son has to live with my sister in law.”
“The trailer is not like living in a drum; it’s like living in a drum SET,” Slaughter jokes. “When it rains, you hear all kinds of sounds. The rain makes one sound. The pine needles brushing up against the trailer make another. And then there’s the occasional cymbal crash when a pine cone hits the roof.”
“We store our clothes in the garage. It’s the mother of all walk-in closets right now.”
The mother of all walk in closets…Amy Slaughter’s garage.
“How do you cook?” I ask.
“The trailer does have a microwave. We have a grill with a burner on it. And we have a hot plate and a toaster oven. But mostly we don’t cook.”
Shrinking an Inch a Day
I shake my head, thinking back to college. I could handle life in a trailer then. Now, I’m not so sure. Amy Slaughter seems only slightly troubled, though.
“It’s not bad if you’re on vacation, but after eight months, it’s kind of getting old. At first you’re so grateful to have it that you overlook the inconveniences. Then after about a month, your thoughts start to go in the opposite direction. It feels like it’s shrinking an inch a day.” I nod; I have a pair of jeans like that.
Camp Chairs and an Air Mattress for Watching TV
“Now that the house is dried out, I’m starting to use it as a workshop to restore my grandmother’s furniture,” says Amy Slaughter. “We have a back porch. We put a TV out there. We have camp chairs and an air mattress for watching the TV. That’s really our living room. But it’s getting hot now. So we may be spending more time in the trailer.”
Third-World Living
“The shower in the trailer is about the size of a bucket. It’s functional and would work. But it’s tiny, so we shower in the house. One of the bathrooms had a shower where we only tore out the glass and the backside of two walls. We put tarps along the wood studs to hold the water in and propped up the one wall with a wire shelving unit and bungee cords. It’s definitely Third-World living.”
The Slaughter shower. Makeshift, but still bigger than their trailer’s shower.
I think to myself, “This lady wins awards for creativity, but I doubt she will pass the plumbing inspection.”
“Purchasing the House We Almost Paid Off.”
I ask how Harvey affected Amy Slaughter’s family financially. Without missing a beat, she says, “We get the privilege of purchasing the house we had almost paid off.” I ask for an explanation. “Our options were: sell and move; put it right back together again; or build up. We didn’t want to move. And we didn’t want to flood … ever again. So we decided to build up. But contractors told us it would be less expensive to wipe the slab and start over than build on top of what we had.”
“How much longer will it take?” I ask.
“Finding a contractor to do the whole thing is difficult. Everybody is booked. We’re in a financial quandary. Flood insurance will only go so far. It will replace what we had, but not what we feel we need to build to be safe. Before this, we had a house that never flooded and we want to get back to that.”
“What are your biggest concerns at the moment?” I ask.
Concerns Looking Forward
“There’s a concern that we won’t be able to sell the house. How many people want a one-story house where you have to climb the stairs to get in?”
“I’m also afraid that Kingwood will be considered a lost cause at some point by politicians. You’ve seen it happen with Forest Cove. ‘Oh, that area floods now, so we should just buy out the owners and wipe it all out.’”
“Meanwhile, you have developers who are buying golf courses, like Forest Cove’s. I’ve heard it was bought and is about to be turned into homesites. That scares me. They’re going to build up higher and that’s just going to send water toward the rest of us. If the politicians don’t start limiting development like that, it will turn the rest of us into a financial sink hole.”
“I worry whether I should put pontoons it,” she says doing her best Sarah Silverman imitation. Then seriously, “It won’t take a Harvey at this point to flood Kingwood again. I know they are committed to dredging the river, but the reality is they haven’t solidified any workable plan yet.”
And with that, Amy Slaughter excuses herself and sprints off to her conference call.
Interview by Bob Rehak
Posted May 15, 2018
259 Days since Hurricane Harvey