Tag Archive for: State of Texas

Long-Term Lake Houston Dredging Plan in Development; West Fork Mouth-Bar 60 Percent Completed

In January, the City hired DRC Emergency Services, LLC (DRC) to begin mechanical dredging of the San Jacinto West Fork Mouth Bar. I’ve provided periodic updates on that. According to Houston Mayor Pro Tem Dave Martin, DRC has now officially completed 60% of that project.

In the meantime, other related dredging projects, including East Fork dredging and long-term Lake Houston maintenance dredging are reportedly taking shape. Here’s how pieces of the puzzle fit together. But one piece is still missing – long-term funding to pay for the maintenance dredging.

Two-Phase Program

DRC’s scope of work has two distinct phases:

  1. Phase One will remove accumulated materials near and at the mouth bar on the West Fork of the San Jacinto River.
  2. Phase Two will remove accumulated materials in the East Fork of the San Jacinto River AND other locations in Lake Houston.
West Fork Mouth Bar as of late June 2020.

During Phase One, 400,000 cubic yards of material will be removed over twelve months. To date, DRC has removed approximately 240,080 cubic yards of material. (See photo above.) That’s 60% in approximately 60% of the allotted time, so that part of the project is on schedule.

East Fork Mouth Bar as of May 2020. This areas went from 18 to 3 feet deep during Imelda, according to boater Josh Alberson. The above-water portion of this sand bar has grown three quarters of a mile since Harvey.

Phase Two of the project will consist of:

  • Hydrographic surveys of the West Fork of the San Jacinto River, the East Fork of the San Jacinto River, and Lake Houston to determine dredge material volumes
  • City of Houston advertising and awarding a dredging contract to the lowest responsive bidder

Phase Two will run simultaneously with Phase One to expedite dredging. 

Dave Martin, Houston Mayor Pro Tem

Mayor Pro Tem Martin did not provide an update on where Phase Two currently stands. But residents have reported seeing survey boats on Lake Houston, and the East and West Forks of the San Jacinto.

Mouth bar forming at Rogers Gully on Lake Houston. Example of kind of projects being considered for Phase 2. Photo late June, 2020.

Long-Term Dredging Plan in Development

Additionally, during Phase Two, City of Houston and its partners will develop a long-term dredging plan for Lake Houston. City of Houston or the Coastal Water Authority will execute the plan.

The intention: to fund dredging operations in perpetuity.

This phased approach will obligate the full grant funding before the 87th legislative session in 2021. This grant funding was made possible thanks to State Representative Dan Huberty (District 127) through the passage of Senate Bill 500.

Mayor Pro Tem Martin credits Huberty for his dedication to the long-term maintenance dredging activities on Lake Houston. “Representative Huberty has been a champion for his residents and a great ally in seeing these additional dredging efforts come to fruition,” said Martin.

$40 Million Project

The total project is valued at $40 million (except for the perpetuity part). Funding for the immediate dredging projects comes through a combination of:

  • City of Houston Harvey Disaster dollars provided by Governor Greg Abbott
  • Grant dollars from the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB)
  • Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) Bond Program.

Harris County Engineer, John Blount submitted the grant application for this project to the TWDB. But the City of Houston became a “subrecipient” and is now managing the project.

Long Term Funding – Still A Missing Piece of Puzzle

Lake Houston, a City of Houston asset, is losing capacity. Everyone has recognized that fact for decades. But as silt filled the rivers, inlets and lake, maintenance was deferred, reportedly for budgetary reasons. In 2017, during Harvey, the problem became so big that no one could ignore it anymore. Flooding was the immediate problem. But loss of water capacity is an even bigger, longer-term problem.

It’s one thing to have a long-term maintenance dredging plan and another to put it into action. But where will the money come from?

A tax on sand mines? Won’t work. Most aren’t in the City. Or even in Harris County.

Some have suggested creating a taxing district for lakefront homeowners. That won’t work either. Not enough of them. And it would create a stampede for the Oklahoma border. Moreover, it hardly seems fair; the lake is part of a City system that provides water to two million people and generates revenue.

The logical solution seems to be increasing the cost of water. Adding just a fraction of a penny per 1000 gallons should do it. Dredging isn’t just about reducing flooding. Or preserving views for lakefront homeowners. It helps preserve the lake’s capacity. And that benefits everyone.

As we develop a long-term dredging plan for the lake, we also need to consider a sustainable source of financing.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 8/12/2020 based, in part, on a release by Houston Mayor Pro Tem Dave Martin

1079 Days after 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 toward FM1960 in 2017.
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

Need for Sediment Management Planning

Sand and sediment clog our rivers and lake. “Dredge!” you say.

“Not that simple,” say the experts. “Who will pay for it? How much should we dredge? Where will the sediment go?”

That’s why we need planning for sediment management. We need to dredge the worst parts of the river now; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has already started that as an emergency project. But we also need to dredge other parts of the river that are not quite critical yet. And we need to figure out how to do all this on a regular basis so that it never gets this bad again.

A giant sand dune has formed at the mouth of the west fork of the San Jacinto. It is not being addressed by the Army Corps dredging project but should be. Thousands of homes upstream from this massive blockage flooded during Harvey.

Sediment Management Challenges That Lie Ahead

I have talked about these issues with experts from Harris County Flood Control and USACE. Both say planning is crucial to a successful maintenance dredging/sediment management program. One provided this document: Galveston-Bay-Programmatic-RSM-Plan-Rev-1, as an example of what we need for the San Jacinto. It’s a long document – 112 pages. But it is worth reading the executive summary, introduction and table of contents at the very least. Parts of it discuss the upper reaches of the San Jacinto. But the main value it provides is that it outlines the challenges ahead.

  •  Who will lead the effort? Who will support it?
  • How much money is needed per year? How can we budget for it? Who will share in the costs?
  • Where will the dredged materials go? How can we identify opportunities to reuse and sell them? Who will market them and how? To what extent can sales defray dredging costs?
  • What are the true life-cycle costs of the sand and sediment that miners send downstream to us?
  • How can we reduce their contribution to the problem? Is there a way to make them part of the solution?
  • How can we coordinate upstream and downstream efforts so that the entire river system flows freely?
  • How can we remove channel blockages more quickly after floods to help prevent additional flooding?

All of these are difficult questions. Starting such an extensive program is like starting a new business.

Budgeting Comes First

A business plan and budgeting are the first issues we need to address. Where will the money for all this come from? Without answering that first, everything else is moot.

So who are the stakeholders?

  • City of Houston – Ensuring the future of Lake Houston is essential to ensuring the future of the City. It’s the City’s main source of water.
  • Harris County Flood Control – Half of the people that live in the county, live in the City.
  • San Jacinto River Authority (SJRA) – The State created the Authority back in the 1930s to impound water and protect people from flooding. Those missions were recently reconfirmed by the Governor.
  • Coastal Water Authority – CWA is the contract operator for Lake Houston Dam and Reservoir. They sell water just like SJRA and can raise money thru water rates to fund flood mitigation. Their enabling legislation mentions drainage and flood responsibilities – same as SJRA.
  • State of Texas – This region has a quarter of all the people who live in the state. Nuff said.

Expecting all costs to be covered by the Harris County Flood Bond in perpetuity is just wishful and foolish thinking. The bond is for capital projects, not ongoing maintenance. You might be able to justify the first dredging as “channel improvements.” But after that, for the sake of the community, we need to find a way to make this program sustainable. Paying interest for ongoing operations is unwise.

Cost Sharing and 5-Year Intervals Can Make It More Doable than Avoidable

In 2000 Brown & Root, recommended dredging every 5 years – a perfect match for a venture with five partners. If each budgeted one fifth of the cost annually, and you did only one fifth of the job each year, this just might be more doable than avoidable. (Avoidance seems to have been the preferred approach in the past.)

We can’t budget sediment management forever on an emergency basis. That’s like using an emergency room for basic medical care. It’s probably not the best idea, nor the most cost effective. So let’s begin the dialog with stakeholders. As Grandma used to say, “An ounce of prevention…”

Posted on July 13, 2018 by Bob Rehak

318 Days since Hurricane Harvey

Emergency Preparation Supplies Sales Tax Holiday April 28 – 30, 2018

Rescue operation during Hurricane Harvey

With hurricane season around the corner, the State of Texas Controller has announced a sales tax holiday for emergency preparation supplies. The sales tax holiday starts this coming weekend and will last three days – April 28 – 30. It’s a little extra encouragement to start preparing now.

The Controller’s web site states: You can purchase certain emergency preparation supplies tax free during the 2018 Emergency Preparation Supplies Sales Tax Holiday. There is no limit on the number of qualifying items you can purchase, and you do not need to issue an exemption certificate to claim the exemption.

This year’s holiday begins at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, April 28, and ends at midnight on Monday, April 30.

These emergency preparation supplies qualify for tax exemption if purchased for a sales price:

  • Less than $3000
    • Portable generators
  • Less than $300
    • Emergency ladders
    • Hurricane shutters
  • Less than $75
    • Axes
    • Batteries, single or multipack (AAA cell, AA cell, C cell, D cell, 6 volt or 9 volt)
    • Can openers – nonelectric
    • Carbon monoxide detectors
    • Coolers and ice chests for food storage – nonelectric
    • Fire extinguishers
    • First aid kits
    • Fuel containers
    • Ground anchor systems and tie-down kits
    • Hatchets
    • Ice products – reusable and artificial
    • Light sources – portable self-powered (including battery operated)
      • Examples of items include: candles, flashlights and lanterns
    • Mobile telephone batteries and mobile telephone chargers
    • Radios – portable self-powered (including battery operated) – includes two-way and weather band radios
    • Smoke detectors
    • Tarps and other plastic sheeting

These supplies do not qualify for tax exemption:

  • Batteries for automobiles, boats and other motorized vehicles
  • Camping stoves
  • Camping supplies
  • Chainsaws
  • Plywood
  • Extension ladders
  • Stepladders
  • Tents
  • Repair or replacement parts for emergency preparation supplies
  • Services performed on, or related to, emergency preparation supplies

Additional Charges Affect Purchase Price

Delivery, shipping, handling and transportation charges are part of the sales price. If the emergency preparation supply being purchased is taxable, the delivery charge is also taxable. Consider these charges when determining whether an emergency preparation supply can be purchased tax free during the holiday.

For example, you purchase a rescue ladder for $299 with a $10 delivery charge, for a total sales price of $309. Because the total sales price of the ladder is more than $300, tax is due on the $309 sales price.

For more information, contact Tax Help, or call 1-800-252-5555.

Posted April 23, 2018, 237 days since Hurricane Harvey