Most projects to combat Lake Houston flooding still haven’t started

After the flooding in early May 2024 and as we received another flood warning, people are once again asking: “What can we do to reduce our flood risk?” » Ironically, with a few exceptions, the answers are the same as those identified after Harvey. We just need to implement them.

Few of the actions identified years ago have been implemented. At the same time, many of the underlying conditions that contribute to flood risk, namely insufficiently mitigated upstream development and sand mining, are accelerating. Sometimes it feels like as we fix things, others mess them up.

It could have been much worse

The Lake Houston area narrowly escaped disaster during flooding in early May. A small number of houses were flooded. However, many more narrowly escaped serious damage. If the storms had dumped a little more water in the wrong places, this flood could have destroyed thousands of homes. Water lapped up to their foundations.

Ironically, the amount of water that caused flooding last May was about a third of what we received during Harvey.

This should highlight how vulnerable people in the Lake Houston area remain to flooding. So let’s look back at what happened to the recommendations from the Hurricane Harvey studies.

2020 San Jacinto River Watershed Drainage Master Plan Recommendations

After Harvey, Harris County Flood Control, Montgomery County, the San Jacinto River Authority and the City of Houston joined forces to identify ways to reduce flood risk in the San Jacinto River Basin .

In December 2020, they released a 3,600-page study titled San Jacinto Regional Watershed Drainage Master Plan.

Pages 36 to 38 of the summary contain recommendations. Page 38 identifies and quantifies the value of 16 recommended flood mitigation projects.

Short-term solutions (page 36)

• Vision Group – to promote collaboration and dynamics
• Policy – standardize minimum requirements for future developments
• Preservation of floodplains – to prevent increased flood risks in the future
• Flood monitoring and alert enhancements – addition of gauges along the main rivers
• Flood response – improve communication, identify and prioritize flood-prone areas and develop public education strategies
• Buybacks – to remove frequently flooded homes and businesses from the flood plain
• Re-mapping floodplains – inform people of changes in their risks. Water surface elevations during a 100-year flood increased between 0.5 and 4.5 feet with the adoption of Atlas 14.
• Watershed protection studies – for each sub-watershed, identify where we need local drainage improvements.

Long-term solutions (page 37)

• Adoption of the “No Negative Impact” policy – ​​to ensure that upstream mitigation efforts do not increase downstream flooding
• Right-of-way acquisition – purchasing land for future flood mitigation projects
• Utilities and roads – protecting evacuation routes and critical infrastructure during planning
• Phase the project to overcome funding constraints – due to the high cost of mitigation projects.

16 Specific rainwater channeling and retention projects (page 38)

See the ranking of projects in the table below as well as the projected costs.

The following parts of the report describe each recommendation in each category in more detail. You can find all the sections on the HCFCD website. They total hundreds of megabytes.

Not much has happened in the last four years

Unfortunately, while elected officials have scrambled to pursue funding, little has been accomplished on the ground in any of these three categories that could actually reduce flood risk. In other words, we saw little construction. It is in the first category that we have seen most of the progress.

Short-term solutions:

Vision Group: The San Jacinto Regional Flood Planning Group was recommended to gather recommendations for the state’s first flood plan. This was published last week.

Policy: Montgomery County is revising its Drainage Criteria Manual. But county commissioners have not yet adopted it. Neither MoCo nor Liberty County has adopted minimum drainage standards for areas draining Harris County.

Preservation of floodplains is unequal. Nonprofits, like the Bayou Land Conservancy, have stepped up. And some government agencies have discouraged floodplain development. But there are loopholes in the regulations and enforcement is lacking in many places, even if regulations exist.

Improvements to flood monitoring and alerts – SJRA has installed several gauges upstream of Lake Conroe, but more are needed. During the last flood, they still could not determine exactly the quantity of water entering, which allowed them to dose the flows to stabilize the lake level.

Flood response: Harris County Flood Control has increased warnings and provided river forecasts updated two to three times daily. So does the SJRA. The mayor held several press conferences in the Kingwood area before and during the flood. He worked with first responders to ensure people were kept out of harm’s way. That was a far cry from Harvey, where a quarter of all deaths in the county occurred in Kingwood. And the elderly found themselves trapped by rising waters in the middle of the night.

Buybacks – HFCCD has purchased townhouses along Marina Drive in Forest Cove that have repeatedly flooded. And Montgomery County has also bought back many properties that flooded repeatedly. But there are many more.

Re-mapping floodplains – FEMA has not yet approved Harris County’s updated flood maps. They still have about three years until completion.

Watershed protection studies – Some have been carried out. Others haven’t even started. It’s uneven. Little has been done with the studies already carried out. And no grant will be approved without students.

Long-term solutions:

“No negative impact” is violated more than the Ten Commandments.

Acquisition of right of way – moved forward on several properties in the Cypress Creek watershed and Harris County purchased the 270-acre Woodridge Village property in Montgomery County from Perry Homes.

Roads – Lake Houston Redevelopment Authority/TIRZ 10 is expanding Northpark Drive and building an all-weather evacuation route from Kingwood. It includes a bridge over the UP railway tracks. FM2100 and FM1960 are growing in Harris County. But the Huffman-Cleveland route is still closed in Liberty County. The Grand Parkway is complete. But FM1485, right next door, has already been cut off by floodwaters twice this year.

Project phase – is standard practice in the industry. But projects associated with the flood bond are moving so slowly that inflation has cost us about 20 percent of the bond’s purchasing power. Where will the money come from to carry out all the projects?

Specific projects

None of the projects listed in the table above have started construction. None are even close. No land was acquired for any. And yet, contrary to studies, these elements actually protect properties when floodwaters rise.

Engineers looked at Project #2 (Walnut Creek Holding), but by the time they investigated, someone had already purchased the land and announced plans to build a solar farm there.

Where to go from here

Net: We’ve selected some of the easiest fruits to find. But we have a long way to go. Especially with construction projects that actually protect assets.

In interviewing people for this article, it became clear that different entities with different interests have hindered many mitigation efforts. We walk between competing and balkanized strongholds.

No one, anywhere, speaks for all the people in this watershed.

Worse still, operational processes related to flood mitigation sometimes become bewilderingly complex. Many small counties, cities, and MUDs don’t even have the expertise to apply for grants.

Worse yet, some groups are undermining improvements. For example, we have dredged the mouth of the Kingwood Diversion Ditch in River Grove Park twice since Hurricane Harvey. And now it needs it again – as the West Fork passes through a sandbox. Even before the floodwaters recede, you can already see sediment coming out of the water. For decades, the dredging interval was approximately once every eight years.

The inhabitants of a river basin are inextricably linked by water. Yet our personal interests (what’s in it for me?) and our political boundaries still divide us.

We need to recognize this fact and develop better ways of designing solutions. We will talk about this again in a future article. I will also discuss some points that the San Jacinto River Basin Plan did not address.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 05/14/24

2450 days since Hurricane Harvey