After a wet winter that saw sediment carried offsite by stormwater on multiple occasions, contractors are finally installing stormwater drainage on Phase II of the troubled Trammell Crow apartment complex on West Lake Houston Parkway and Kings Park Way.

Aerial photos taken on 03/18/24 show order gradually emerging out of apparent chaos on a construction site piled high with mountains of dirt and pockmarked with giant holes, even as contractors lay drain pipe, pour concrete and begin expanding the Phase I Stormwater Detention Basin. See below.

In the photo above note now the excavator is shaving down the bank of the Trammell Crow Phase I detention basin (foreground).

Expansion of Detention Basin

Plans show that both phases of the 11-foot deep, apartment-complex detention basin will comprise 36.99 acre feet. They also show that the total size of the development is approximately 32.4 acres. That exceeds the minimum requirement of .65 acre feet of detention per acre required by Harris County Flood Control.

Elsewhere on the Trammell Crow site, contractors are busy installing drainage.

After the run-in with Harris County Engineering, the developer was later caught pumping silty stormwater into the street on a Sunday, when inspectors would likely be off work.

Regardless, there have been no floods since, giving contractors time to move forward.

At this time, long-range weather forecasts show no major storm fronts for the remainder of the month. That may give Trammell Crow contractors a window to avert more disastrous drainage delays.

Stormwater is the enemy of construction. That’s why most contractors plan for it upfront, rather than trying to deal with it after the fact.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 3/18/24

2393 Days since Hurricane Harvey

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