Study takes aim at flooding as area grows

E. Harris County survey will help planners understand water flow

Growth is coming to east Harris County, and officials hope careful planning can prevent flooding of the homes and businesses expected to emerge across a landscape that’s now mostly rural.

The Harris County Flood Control District is undertaking an expansive survey of a 202-square mile region along Cedar Bayou that makes up much of the county’s eastern border with Chambers and Liberty Counties. It runs from Baytown in the south to FM 1960 in the north.

The effort will help planners understand how water flows through 128 miles of the bayou and its many tributaries, particularly during severe storms. Results of the study, expected to be complete in February 2018, will help determine where to dig detention ponds or widen or straighten the bayou.

The study area is lightly populated — close to 60,000 people across Harris, Chambers and Liberty Counties, according to Census Bureau estimates — and sparsely developed. But that’s expected to change, in part because of the Grand Parkway, the region’s outermost ring road.

A 44-mile segment of the parkway moved toward construction in March. The tollway is expected to facilitate development of new subdivisions and strip centers in the study area, as it has elsewhere.

“We’re really trying to get ahead of the curve,” said Commissioner Jack Morman, whose Precinct 2 includes the affected area. “We’re trying to anticipate future needs. This area, as far as Precinct 2 is concerned, is really the epicenter of where we are going to see growth in the future.”

Houston’s booming population and development provide a constant

challenge to the flood control district, which each year must prioritize how to spend $60 million on projects to limit damage from the area’s frequent torrential rains.

The district has focused much of its work on controlling floods threatening built-out areas — many neighborhoods were built prior to today’s understanding of weather and floods.

In some parts of fastgrowing northwest Harris County, the flood control district has planned big regional projects that can double as parks, wildlife habitat and walking trails in advance of new development. This approach is reflected in the Cedar Bayou study as well.

The study is funded in part by a $250,000 grant from the Texas Water Development Board and $400,000 from the flood control district.

It could lead to projects such as dredging big ponds along waterways to hold more rainwater and stop areas downstream from flooding. Other potential projects include buying out parts of floodprone neighborhoods or straightening a channel and adding concrete so rainwater flows out faster.

The survey would also map out floodplains of certain tributaries for the first time.

Dena Green, the flood control district’s feasbility studies department manager, said some developed parts of the study area have flooded in the past. One example is the neighborhood around Roseland Park, a small park near the intersection of the Grand Parkway and Cedar Bayou in Baytown.

That’s where Robert Barksdale, 65, has lived since 2012. His home is close to Cedar Bayou. On a recent Wednesday, Barksdale said, five inches of rain came down in his neighborhood, backing up a ditch near his home that is supposed to drain into the bayou. Water pooled outside his ranch-style, one-story home and rose almost to his doorstep.

Barksdale, a retired fleet logistics manager from Dallas, is glad the flood control district is studying flooding issues in the watershed. A storm surge from Hurricane Ike in 2008 put almost all the homes in his neighborhood underwater.

Barksdale said flooding has worsened, including during a storm in March, since the construction of new homes around the Grand Parkway less than a mile from his house.

“It backed up more recently than it has any other time,” Barksdale said. “It makes a difference.”