Harris County Flood Bond Archives

2024 Flood-Bond Update Shows Changed, Changing Priorities

July 21, 2024 – Last week, Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) quietly shared this year’s flood-bond update with Commissioners Court. The update came during widespread power and internet outages from Hurricane Beryl that limited its visibility.

The flood-bond update details progress on the 2018 Flood Bond for the first time since the last update last October.

Combining the data in this flood-bond update with data from other sources reveals the impact of the County’s political divide and Equity Prioritization Indices. Both have affected projects in the Lake Houston area and Precinct 3 negatively.

But first some good news.

More Partner Funds Now Secured than Required by Original Bond

The total of secured funding now exceeds $5.2 billion. That includes the $2.5 billion approved by voters in 2018 plus $2.7 billion in other funding secured since then.

The additional funds include grants and matching funds from city, state and federal governments plus other local organizations, such as municipal utility districts. It also includes $87 million in Bond ID Z-07 – the Bond Program Reserve, formerly known as the Flood Resilience Trust.

Commissioners Court allocated this money to backstop bond funding before a massive infusion of funds from the General Land Office and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2022.

The total amount now available exceeds total project costs in both the original bond estimate and a slightly revised project list released in a 2021 flood-bond update.

HCFCD says it is working on revising costs to reflect inflation and the rising cost of property acquisition since then. However, it appears that HCFCD did not include inflation-adjusted project estimates in the current update.

Dollars Spent vs Dollars Secured

Regardless, we are now at a point in the bond where available cash covers the original estimates. So looking at dollars spent vs. dollars secured gives us a reasonable feel for how close we are to completing flood-bond projects in various watersheds. See the bar graph below.

*Compiled by combining 2024 Bond Update Appendix B on Page 10 with spending data obtained separately via FOIA request.* *See data in table below.*

Brays and Greens are more than 80% complete. Five others are more than 50%.

Meanwhile, 15 others are less than 50%. And of those, 10 are less than 25%. The county’s largest watershed, the San Jacinto, is only 19% complete (“spent”).

The graph above does not include Carpenters Bayou. It was an anomaly at 1762%. The 2021 bond update included only half a million dollars for a study there. But HCFCD has spent almost $9 million so far. Including Carpenters in the bar graph distorted the scale and obscured the differences between the other watersheds. However, I did include it in the table below.

*Compiled by combining Bond Update Appendix B on Page 10 with spending data obtained via FOIA request.* *County-wide projects not included.*

Next month will mark the sixth anniversary of flood-bond approval. The bond was originally intended to be a 10-year program. So, totaling all these figures, we are about 40% done in 60% of the time. There’s certainly room for improvement on that front.

Projects in some watersheds are stalled while projects in others near completion. Take, for instance, the Kingwood Diversion Ditch and Taylor Gully Projects in the San Jacinto Watershed. The Kingwood Area Drainage Analysis identified them as the top two projects in Kingwood back in 2020.

But not a shovel full of dirt has been turned yet on the Diversion Ditch project. And a $1,000 excavation and removal contract on the Woodridge/Taylor Gully project was terminated last November when only one third complete.

Partisan Changes Negatively Impact Precinct 3

Another thing to look at: changes to projects (Dollar Increases or Decreases; Project Deletions or Additions). While a certain amount of changes are normal when dealing with rough, early estimates, in this case, the changes also reflect a partisan bias.

When calculating the differences, I compared projects by Bond ID in the 2024 flood-bond update to the original bond allocations in 2018.

Harris County has three Democratic commissioners and one Republican – Tom Ramsey in Precinct 3.

Thirty projects affecting the three Democratic Precincts increased by $162.6 million – $54.2 million per precinct on average. But projects in the lone Republican precinct increased only $27 million. Thus, the three Democrats each benefited twice as much from additions as the lone Republican.
Likewise, 12 projects in the three Democratic Precincts decreased by a total of $92.6 million or $30.6 million per precinct on average. But Ramsey’s precinct lost $40.5 million.
Ramsey lost $13.5 million more than he gained.
Ellis, Garcia and Briones each gained about $8 million more than they lost.

When watersheds crossed precinct boundaries, I split dollars evenly among them. For example, if a project increased in value by $10 million and benefited one Republican and one Democratic precinct, I allocated $5 million to each. While that may not be precisely accurate in all cases, more precise data is not readily available.

To see the evolution of the bond fund through various iterations during the last six years, see the Harris County Flood Control District tab on the ReduceFlooding Reports page.

Other Items of Note

I did not include Countywide Expenditures in the calculations above even though they took a large hit. Their decrease shows up in corresponding increases for watershed projects. And I was more interested in how those were skewed.

However, one item definitely deserves future exploration: the $50 million decrease in “Federal Grant Funded Volunteer Home Buyouts.” Typically, the Federal Government grants funds for specific purposes. Where did this money go? The 2024 flood-bond update does not say.

Also of note: HCFCD currently has 20 projects in construction or turnover. The District has spent more than $2 billion in bond and partnership funds out of the $5.2 billion now available.

The latest bond update points out that of 181 original projects, 42 have been completed and closed out.

Equity Being Redefined Again

Separate from the bond update, Commissioners approved an expansion of equity guidelines last week. Item 18 on the agenda discusses an expanded definition of “equity” that will be used to allocate future flood mitigation dollars. It includes three components:

Structural Equity – righting historical wrongs
Procedural Equity – implementing procedures, policies and programs for groups previously not considered.
Socio-emotionally Intelligent Equity – mitigates the impacts of interpersonal, individual, structural, systemic, and institutional racism and sexism.

More news to follow when I figure out how all that will affect flood-control-mitigation dollars which have historically correlated to flood damage more than sexism.

At the very least, the imposition of new metrics on projects will slow down project scoring and implementation. It’s additional overhead burden on already complex processes. But my real fear? More and more of the San Jacinto watershed budget will slip away to other watersheds.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/21/2024

2518 Days since Hurricane Harvey

West Fork Mouth Bar Getting Snack Sized

Mechanical dredging is slowly but surely downsizing the San Jacinto West Fork Mouth Bar. It’s still about a billion times larger than a snack-sized McDonald’s Oreo McFlurry, but it’s a vast improvement over what it was. It now appears to be about one third of its size in January when most people would have called it super sized.

A Sisyphean Task

Snack-sized puns aside, the job is a Sisyphean task. For those not familiar with the term, Sisyphus was a figure from Greek mythology who angered Zeus. Zeus sentenced him to rolling a boulder up a hill for the rest of eternity only for it to roll back down again every time he got near the top.

Historians and storytellers see many morals in the tale. Be persistent. Work hard. Never give up.

And so it is with those three lonely excavators working on giant sand bar at the mouth of the West Fork where it meets Lake Houston.

Day in and day out, they remove one bucketful at a time. Six months after they started, much of the above-water portion of the sand bar has now been removed. But they still haven’t started to address the matter of cutting a channel that connects the dredged portion of the river with the lake.

Meanwhile, more sand and silt comes down river with every storm.

Comparing Post-Harvey with Recent Photos

Still, if you compare post-Harvey photos with photos taken recently, you can see progress.

Dredgers are slowly reducing the dam behind the dam.

*Looking south today. Little length has been removed, but the width is about a third of what it was after Harvey. Photo taken 6/16/2020.*

The dredgers keep nibbling the south edge of the bar, taking row after row of sand, much like eating an ear of corn.

*Looking west, upstream, from eastern end.* *Photo 7/5/2020.*

*Western tip of bar is now only a little wider than the tracks of one excavator. 7/5/2020.*

*Looking east at sunrise on 7/5/2020. Note FM1960 bridge in the extreme upper right.*

In the next few months, they may run out of room to maneuver on the bar.

Survey Boat Spotted on Lake Last Week

Residents recently reported seeing a survey boat out on Lake Houston. That’s a good sign. It says that the City, County and State are now looking at what should come next with the $30 million that State Rep. Dan Huberty got the legislature to commit last year as an amendment to SB500. Harris County Flood Control also committed $10 million to dredging in the 2018 flood bond fund.

The City is currently funding the mechanical dredging with $6 million left over FEMA disaster recovery funds. Those should be running out soon if they haven’t already.

To my knowledge, no one has yet addressed the issue of long-term maintenance dredging, although everyone acknowledges the need for it. That river just keeps on bringing sediment.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/6/2020

1042 Days after Hurricane Harvey

City Decides Not to Participate in Elm Grove Rescue; Says County Should Pay 100%

Mayor Pro Tem Dave Martin shocked a meeting of Kingwood residents at a town hall meeting on February 25, 2020. He he said the City would not participate in a much-rumored buyout of the Perry Homes’ Woodridge Village property that contributed to the flooding of Elm Grove Village twice last year. The rumors first went public in a Houston Chronicle story on January 27th this year. In that story the Chronicle characterized the plan as a bailout, not a buyout, but later retracted that in an editorial board statement.

The plan was to purchase all or part of the land and build a giant detention pond on it that would prevent Elm Grove from flooding again.

Silence After Executive Session in Commissioner’s Court Meeting

The Chronicle story appeared one day before a Harris County Commissioner’s Court meeting. Commissioners were to consider the purchase of the property at that meeting in executive session. But there was no public announcement after the meeting of what they decided. We later learned the reason why.

County Asked City to Pay for Half of Purchase

Harris County, according to Martin at the town hall meeting, decided to ask the City to put up half the money for the purchase of the land. Martin initially supported the purchase “at the right price,” according to the Chronicle story.

However, something happened between the Commissioner’s Court Meeting and the Town Hall Meeting to make Martin change his mind about participating in the deal. At the Town Hall meeting, Martin never mentioned the purchase price as an objection.

Martin Claims We Pay Taxes to County So County Should Pay 100%

Instead, Martin launched into a discussion of his tax bill. He said that out of his total tax bill he paid:

56.4% to Humble ISD
18.8% to the City of Houston (of course, that didn’t include fees, such as those for drainage)
14.4% to Harris County.

That adds up to 89.6%, but Mr. Martin did not explain what happened to the missing 10.4%.

Who Is Doing What

He simply said that dramatized the need to get “… Harris County to do more work in Kingwood.” (Editor’s note: at a previous town hall meeting Martin explained that the county was already taking over all work on ditches and streams in Kingwood, but then he quickly added that if the County purchased the Woodridge property, it would let the CITY do more work on ditches and streams. Martin never addressed that apparent contradiction).

Why City Refuses to Participate

Martin then explained that Kingwood overwhelmingly supported the $2.5 billion Harris County Flood Bond in 2018. He also pointed out that the language in the flood bond lets Harris County purchase land in other upstream counties for the purpose of floodwater detention – exactly like the proposal for Perry Homes’ Woodridge Village property.

According to Martin, County Precinct 4 Commissioner Jack Cagle wants the City of Houston to contribute half of the money.

“Quite frankly,” said Martin, “I’m not going to ask the Mayor to contribute half. Because they (Harris County) should contribute 100% of it because we gave them our tax dollars and they specified what these tax dollars are to be used for. So they need to come up with 100%.”
Houston Mayor Pro Tem Dave Martin

(Another editor’s note: neither the bond language, nor the associated project list that was published before the vote specifically mentions Elm Grove or the Perry Homes land. The bond language mentions upstream detention only in a generic sense, and the majority of projects identified before the election involved partnerships.)

Martin then talked about berating Harris County Judge Lina Hildago on the subject before urging residents to contact their county officials. He closed by demanding that the County should put up 100% of the money for Perry Homes’ land because “WE are that close to making this happen.” (Emphasis NOT added.) Martin also asserted that if the County took sole responsibility for the deal, it would somehow help flooding problems in other unrelated areas such as North Woodland Hills.

Listen to Audio Clip of Discussion at Town Hall

To listen to a four-minute audio recording of this segment of the meeting, click the key frame of Mayor Pro Tem Dave Martin below.

Segment of 2/25/2020 Kingwood Town Hall Meeting in which Houston Mayor Pro Tem Dave Martin discusses the buyout of Perry Homes’ Woodridge Village land to construct a detention pond and why Harris County Should Pay for 100% of the deal.

Mr. Martin never explained why the taxing entity we pay the least to should assume exclusive responsibility for the entire project. Nor did he address why drainage fees paid to the City, could not be used for the project.

Meanwhile, the county has been silent on whether it will pick up 100% of the tab for the detention work. And Elm Grove residents still spend sleepless nights every time it rains.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 3/1/2020

915 Days after Hurricane Harvey and 164 after Imelda

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