Greenways, baywaters and fields of dreams
Region needs a cohesive, sustainable environmental improvement plan
Close your eyes for a moment and have someone read the following to you:
“Adiverse metroplex comprised of forested headwaters and bayou greenways that traverse prairies as they meander (and at times rush) toward coastal baywaters, islands and oyster reefs, with urban/suburban development and major urban ports nestled among these ecoregions.”
You’ve been to this place. It’s the eight-county Houston-Gulf Coast region. But we don’t often hear of our home described this way because we don’t have a cohesive environmental improvement and sustainability plan pulling together our wonderful ecological features.
PlanHouston.org lists 140 plans created by the city of Houston, neighborhoods, developers and agencies outside the city of Houston interested in improving the region. These include a multitude of transportation plans, growth and development plans, drainage plans, management plans, bike plans and economic development plans. None provide a comprehensive framework for showcasing, targeting and funding critically needed land and water conservation projects in our Gulf CoastHouston region. This needs to change.
Acting as a collaborative of environmental, governmental and business groups, more than 100 organizations have recently come together to create the eight-county GulfHouston Regional Conservation Plan (GulfHoustonRCP. org) composed of all known environmental and naturebased recreational projects in this region. All priority projects within the Gulf-Houston
RCP seek to improve the long-term health, welfare and quality of life of residents, visitors and wildlife in this eight-county region by substantially enhancing and sustaining its myriad ecosystem services, including flood mitigation and stormsurge protection, air and water quality improvements, wildlife habitat, recreation, ecotourism, green infrastructure alternatives and economic development.
The Gulf-Houston RCP has collectively identified our region’s most pressing environmental needs with a “Working List of Projects” organized into five key initiatives:
1Bayou Greenways Initiative: projects building trails and parks along nine major bayou arteries. 2Headwaters to Baywaters Initiative: projects enhancing riparian corridors that feed into Galveston Bay. 3Prairie Conservation Initiative: projects restoring and preserving thousands of acres of coastal prairie remnants throughout the eight counties in the RCP; 4Galveston Bay Habitat Acquisition & Easements Initiative: projects protecting coastal wetlands, bottomlands and estuaries along Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico;
5Galveston Bay Oyster Reefs & Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative: projects building oyster reefs, inland rookery islands and other bird habitat within the lower Galveston Bay watershed.
Many sources already exist to provide funding for targeted priority proj- ects under the regional conservation plan. Over the past two years, more than $100 million in funding for Gulf-Houston RCP projects has come to this region via local, state and federal sources. Last April, more than $50 million in grant proposals benefiting the eightcounty Gulf-Houston Region were submitted to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to be considered for funding under the RESTORE Act, part of the initiative to help the Gulf recover from the 2010 BP oil spill. Collectively, these RCP projects represent more than 17,000 acres of prairie, coastal wetland and riparian forest restoration, worth billions in flood mitigation and erosion control, air and water quality improvements, storm barriers, recreation and ecotourism and economic development.
As funding is obtained, implementation of these projects provide hundreds of employment oppor- tunities for the growing workforce in the Greater Houston region in diverse areas of land and water restoration, green infrastructure construction, environmental research, land conservation, recreation, ecology, biology and wildlife management.
The recent “Tax Day Flood” in the Houston region produced an average of 1.5 inches of rainfall per hour in many areas. An acre of prairie grass in our region can absorb 9 inches of rainfall per hour. In places where the rain fell on prairie grasslands, the rain was significantly absorbed by the land for up to six hours before overflow occurred. Similarly, a mature tree can absorb up to 12 inches of water per hour, allowing absorption for almost eight hours.
Like most commodities, the value of conserving land and water in our region fluctuates with the demand. Currently, the demand for absorbent land (prairies, coastal wetlands and forests) is high in our region because it helps prevent the flooding of residential and commercial areas. Two years ago during the drought, the value of conserving water sources was high. At all times, the value of air and water quality is high. Under the Gulf-Houston RCP, everyone now has access to the targeted environmental projects currently planned and pending in the region and more opportunities to analyze demand in funding priorities as regional environmental values change. Support for the RCP is critical to its success. January-Bevers wrote this on behalf of the GulfHouston RCP Steering Committee. Houston Wilderness serves as the facilitator of the GulfHouston RCP.