Kingwood Village Estates Archives

Easy Way to Make Your Community More Resilient to Flooding

2/9/2026 – The Harris County Infrastructure Resilience Team wants public input on ideas to make the area more resilient to flooding. As someone who believes that all of us are smarter than one of us, I’m passing the request on to ReduceFlooding.com readers.

Do you see a situation that could lead to flooding? On your street? In your neighborhood? In your city or county?
What would reduce the potential for flooding in your opinion?
What would help us recover from flooding faster?

Please email your thoughts to the contact page on this website and I will forward them to the people who can do something about them.

As thought starters, here are several ideas I see that could make living here safer.

Create a River-Basin-Wide Flood Control District

Much flooding originates in cities and counties that let development happen in floodplains. Sometimes they let development happen with insufficient mitigation. This problem is exacerbated by the dozens of municipalities, counties, MUDs, PUDs, and drainage districts each of which have their own regulations and few of which of effective enforcement.

*Entire San Jacinto River Basin by SJRA. Note: the area draining past Kingwood is larger than all of Harris County.*

A flood control district that covers the entire river basin could solve flooding due to this fragmentation and a patchwork quilt of regulations across the region. There is no central coordinating body.

In the last legislation, Rep. Dennis Paul introduced HB204. It would have let other counties join Harris County to create an expanded flood control district. However, the bill never made it out of committee.

Senator Bettancourt and Representative Paul introduced similar bills in the previous legislative session. Perhaps next year, they will succeed with your support.

Control Erosion Better

Erosion can reduce the carrying capacity of our rivers and streams. It displaces water that may end up in your living room during a flood event because the stream can no longer hold it. Fighting erosion is two-front war. We need to reduce it at its source. And we need to remove sediment that makes its way downstream, blocking our rivers and channels.

Colony Ridge ditch erosion — *Uncontrolled erosion in Colony Ridge, Liberty County, in East Fork Watershed.*

This means addressing the main sources of sediment, such as sand mining and insufficiently mitigated upstream development. It also means removing any sediment that makes its way downstream by scrupulous adherence to maintenance intervals.

We’ve seen numerous examples of blocked drainage ditches and even rivers such as the mouth bars on the East and West Forks, the Kingwood Diversion Ditch, Rogers Gully.

Reduce Subsidence Across a Wider Area

Subsidence, caused by excessive groundwater withdrawals, can alter the gradient of rivers and create bowls in the landscape. The Harris Galveston Subsidence District has put regulations in place to reduce it. And they’ve worked where they have been in effect the longest.

But newly regulated areas are still subsiding at alarming rates. And that subsidence can erase the safety margin of your home above the floodplain (usually one or two feet above the 100-year floodplain, depending on the age of your home and where you live).

Houston area subsidence map from satellite data. — *From Subsidence District 2024 Annual Report*

The way to solve this problem is to get rapidly subsiding areas on surface water. But that’s more expensive. So, we also need educational campaigns that explain the benefits of surface water. People may not argue about paying a few dollars more each month if they know it could save them hundreds of thousands in a high water event.

Locate Assisted-Living Centers Outside of Floodplains

Twelve people, aged 75-95, died at Kingwood Village Estates as a result of Harvey. That’s one third of all the people who died in Harris County. Evacuating them by life boats put their lives and the lives of first responders at risk. They weren’t warned in time to make a safe, orderly evacuation by cars or buses.

Residents trying to escape as Harvey's floodwaters rose — *Residents trying to escape Kingwood Village Estates as Harvey’s floodwaters rose*

Warning Sirens

Install warning sirens in areas that flood frequently to give people time to evacuate. Floods frequently knock out communications or happen in the middle of the night. The chain of communication can be disrupted. But wailing sirens can wake up even the soundest sleepers in the middle of the night.

With sirens, many lives could have been saved in Kingwood and along the Guadalupe last July.

Flood Education in High Schools

We have drivers’ ed. Why not flood ed? Greater awareness of the causes and dangers of flooding could eventually shift housing demand to safer locations.

Perhaps the State Board of Education could create course materials that they distribute to school districts. They might educate young people how to research flood risk before buying a home. Or where to find information about projected flood crests in an emergency.

Better to learn before you buy a home than after!

Create County/City Parks in Flood-Prone Areas

It’s hard to tell people that they can’t build on their land. So why not buy dangerous flood-prone land and convert it into parks or recreational space?

The Houston Parks Board has been doing this for decades. Texas Parks and Wildlife did it with Lake Houston Wilderness Park (which they gave to the City.)

If people don’t live where it floods, they can’t flood. No buyouts. And no demand for expensive flood-mitigation projects. Prevention is always much cheaper than correction in the long run.

What Are Your Ideas?

Please send me your thoughts on how to make your community more resilient to flooding. Just write a paragraph or two. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. Then email your thoughts through the contact page of this website.

I’ll make sure the Harris County Infrastructure Resilience Team sees them.

The deadline for submissions is February 12, 2026. Thanks in advance for your help!

Posted by Bob Rehak on 2/9/26

3086 Days since Hurricane Harvey

What Happened Downstream During Harvey as Lake Conroe Released 79,000 CFS

Last night, I posted some statistics about Lake Conroe levels after the SJRA started the release during Hurricane Harvey. Tim Garfield and R.D. Kissling, two top geologists, now retired from one of the world’s largest oil companies, have looked at the release from a downstream perspective. Last year, they put everything they learned into this 69-page presentation delivered to the University of Houston Honors Program.

*From “A Brief History of Lake Houston and the Hurricane Harvey Flood,” by Tim Garfield and RD Kissling with help from Bob Rehak, 2019.*

Recap of Key Points About Lake Conroe Release

To recap several key points:

The SJRA never did let Lake Conroe rise to its allowable flowage easement. The water level in Lake Conroe peaked at 7 a.m., August 28, 2017, at 206.23 feet. The SJRA’s flowage easement is 207 feet.
Outflow exceeded inflow by 8:30 a.m. on the 28th and stayed that way for the duration of the storm. As the lake level declined, the lake had up to 3 available feet of storage capacity.
Yet the SJRA kept releasing, on average, 2X – 10X more water than it was taking in. At one point, the ratio exceeded 100:1.

Tracking the Release Down West Fork

Garfield notes that the discharge ramp up that began the evening of the 27th reached a peak discharge rate of more than 79,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) just before noon on the 28th. The discharge rate didn’t dip below 70,000 cfs until 4 a.m. on the 29th – more than 16 hours later.

Following in lockstep with the Conroe release, flow rates at downstream gauges ramped up, in lockstep. By lining up the peaks of gages downriver, you can literally see the water surging down the West Fork all the way to Lake Houston. (See left side of image above.)

Significantly, Garfield says, these gauges all showed flattening flow-rate curves before the release ramp up. Those curves then turned and steepened upward as the Conroe release pulse arrived at those gauges.

Timing and Impact of Release in Lake Houston Area

Peak flow at the Humble gauge was reached shortly after noon on the 29th, roughly 24 hours after peak discharge was reached at the dam and roughly 30 hours after the high-rate release ramp up began.

Water started creeping under the doors of Kingwood Village Estates, a senior living center in Kingwood Town Center about 1.4 miles from the West Fork, at 3 a.m., on August 29th, 2017. It kept rising all morning and finally stopped another mile further inland. Water entered the last (highest) house to flood in Kings Point (the Kingwood subdivision closest to the main body of Lake Houston) at 2 p.m. that same day, according to Elise Whitney Bishop.

The level of upper Lake Houston, as measured at US59, rose an additional 7 feet during this period.

Significant additional flooding of Kingwood homes can be tied to this same period of increased discharge.

Flow rates measured at the Grand Parkway gauge and calculated at the Humble gage indicate a flow rate increase in this period of between 70,000 to 80,000 cfs, corresponding closely to the 79,000+ peak flow rate added by the Conroe dam discharge.

“The data from the affidavits further supports several key conclusions from the Harvey Flood Fundamentals section of our University of Houston talk,” said Garfield. Those include:

The large sustained release from Lake Conroe made West Fork flooding worse. The extra 80,000 cfs increased the West Fork flow 50%.
The release occurred as the storm was abating. It significantly increased flood damage in the Lake Houston area.

*More than 4,400 structures flooded in Humble and Kingwood along the West Fork. Source: HCFCD.*

The list of damages ran well over a billion dollars.

The SJRA Argument

The SJRA maintains to this day that Lake Conroe is a water-supply reservoir, not a flood-control reservoir. See the affidavits of Hector Olmos and Chuck Gilman. Olmos is a consultant who helped design the operations manual for the gates at Lake Conroe. Gilman is the SJRA’s Director of Flood Management, hired the year after Harvey.

They are basically claiming, “We don’t have the right tool to prevent downstream flooding.”

Editorial Opinion

Editorial opinion: That excuse has always sounded hollow to me. It attempts to curtail discussion of whether the SJRA waited too long to start releasing water, released too much at the peak, and then kept on releasing too much for days.

That discussion is a matter of public concern that could save lives and property in the future. We need to have it.

Sadly, it will take the courts to figure this out. In the meantime, the SJRA has hired some of the highest priced lawyers in the country and now appears to be angling for legislative immunity by hinting at higher water prices “statewide” if liability can’t be controlled.

It all smacks of similar arguments in other industries. If you’ve lived long enough, you’ve heard them all before, such as car companies that would be driven out of business if forced to install seat belts and other safety features. Well, that prediction didn’t quite work out! Luckily, for General Motors, the addition of safety features helped fuel its resurgence.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/12/2020 with thanks to Tim Garfield and RD Kissling

1018 Days after Hurricane Harvey

The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.

HCFCD Lower Ben’s Branch Clean-out Project Nears Final Stretch

The project to remove approximately 76,285 cubic yards of sediment from the lower reaches of Ben’s Branch in Kingwood is nearing its goal.

High-Priority Ben’s Branch Project Began Last August

This was a high priority project for Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) not just because of the sedimentation, but because of the destruction it helped cause during Hurricane Harvey.

12 seniors from Kingwood Village Estates died either as a result injuries sustained during evacuation, or the stress of losing everything they owned.
Every home in the Enclave flooded: 283 out of 283.
All homes in Kingwood Greens flooded: 225 out of 225.
More than half the homes in Fosters Mill flooded: 346 out of 549.
The Kingwood Country Club flooded.
The Deerwood Club flooded.
100% of the businesses in Kingwood Town Center flooded.
100% of the businesses in Kings Harbor flooded.
Kingwood High School flooded to the second floor.
Kingwood’s library flooded.

*Scope of project starts at red line on Kingwood Drive and curls south to the YMCA, where oval intersects West Lake Houston Parkway and blue line.*
*Construction crews today were working on both sides of the West Lake Houston Parkway Bridge just above the Y.*

The Ben’s Branch cleanup began last August, but suffered a setback during Tropical Storm Imelda. Much of the sediment that had been piled on the sides of the channel washed back into it during the storm.

Crews Making Up for Lost Time Since Imelda

Since then, however, Flood Control crews have been making up for lost time. Construction weather has been almost ideal. I took all the photos below on the afternoon of 1/7/2020.

*Contractor pulls sediment from Ben’s Branch under the West Lake Houston Parkway Bridge.*

*Just west of the WLHP Bridge, adjacent to Kingwood Greens in the background, another excavator was pulling sediment from Ben’s Branch and pushing it closer to shore…*

*…where yet another excavator was loading dump trucks. Contractors will remove an estimated 7,000 loads from the stream.*

*On the East side of the WLHP bridge, two more excavators tag-teamed more sediment. While one worked the shoreline…*

*Another broke up clumps of sediment and pulled it from the stream.*

*The current downstream extent of work is just north of the YMCA. That bend in Ben’s Branch behind the excavator is the final bend in the project.*

For More Information

HCFCD expected the Ben’s Branch project to take 9 months. That would put completion in April. At the current rate, the contractor should make that date and perhaps beat it.

For more information about the project, consult the Kingwood pages of the HCFCD website. The project ID is # G103-33-00-X004 – Bens Branch Conveyance Restoration.

All Kingwood residents will breath easier when HCFCD finishes Ben’s Branch.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 1/7/2020

861 Days since Hurricane Harvey and 110 since Imelda

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