Conroe dam release causes flood of suits
Hundreds want San Jac Authority held accountable
In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, officials at the Lake Conroe dam began unprecedented releases into the West Fork of the San Jacinto River, sending an amount of water rushing downstream that approached the average volume pouring over Niagara Falls.
Now hundreds of property owners down river are in court, demanding the San Jacinto River Authority, the overseers of the dam, be held accountable for releasing about 106 billion gallons of water into their communities and flooding thousands of homes in Montgomery and northern Harris County.
Among them are Deryl Thompson and her husband, Jack D. Perkins. Three days after the storm made landfall, they thought they had been spared, as barely a trickle of water covered their front yard.
But on Monday, Aug. 28, water suddenly came
rushing into their property “like a tsunami,” slamming their three-acre plot in rural Montgomery County with 6 feet of water in 45 minutes.
“The water was moving so fast,” Perkins said. “It’s hard on us old folks. … The water came so fast no one could help us put our belongings on the second floor.”
Nobody warned them the water would rise rapidly from the river, about a half-mile away. Nobody told them their home likely would be engulfed. Nobody told them they might lose everything.
“There are people who clearly were not flooded until they released that dam,” said Derek Potts, an attorney handling one of at least two lawsuits filed against the river authority and the Texas Water Development Board. “It doesn’t seem like it was very controlled. Why couldn’t they have done it more orderly and gradual? Some homes look like a bomb went off.”
The lawsuits join dozens of others filed over similar releases from the Addicks and Barker reservoirs that followed 24 hours after those at Lake Conroe.
San Jacinto River Authority officials declined to discuss details of the releases because of the pending litigation, but Jace Houston, the authority’s general manager, told lawmakers at a hearing earlier this month that officials had no choice but to release the water as heavy rains caused Lake Conroe to rise.
Failure of the dam was at risk, he said.
“The water was going down the river one way or another,” Houston said. “It can go in a controlled fashion as it was designed or it can go over the top of the gate and put the structure at risk of failure.”
Houston said the river authority cannot issue evacuation orders or road closures. Rather, officials alert emergency authorities, he added, who then decide how to proceed.
But Houston admitted that “communication can always be improved.”
That’s an understatement, said U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, who saw friends and neighbors flooded from the releases.
“I don’t think it could be handled any worse,” Poe said. “People in Kingwood and Humble went to bed — they were dry even from the rain — and woke up with four to six feet of water in their houses. Nobody told us the water was coming.”
‘Watching the water rise’
The Lake Conroe releases began at 12:30 a.m. Aug. 27, and by early afternoon they were at 8,120 cubic feet per second.
The next morning in Humble, residents of the Northshire subdivision just behind Deerbrook Mall began to get warnings from city police officers. A release of water from Lake Conroe likely would flood their homes, the officers told stunned homeowners. U.S. 59 would be closed, they said.
Already, large pockets of deep water were impeding drivers, and officers warned it was going to get worse. Residents were given an hour or two to leave and were told that emergency services would be curtailed after dark.
About 10 miles away in Kingwood, Carolanne Norris and her neighbors heard nothing of the dam water rushing down the river toward them.
The rain had reduced to a soft drizzle by then as she watched her8-year-old son, Christian, drive a remote control boat through a puddle at the end of their driveway.
As evening approached, she looked out the bay window above her kitchen sink and saw water rising up the tree line. The house had never flooded before, she said, and she had received no warning from officials that this year would be different.
Upstream at the dam, meanwhile, releases had reached 79,100 cfs — just shy of the average volume of 85,000 that pours over Niagara Falls and more than twice the record 33,360 cfs set in 1994.
As her kids slept, Norris and her husband posted up on the steps leading to the second floor. They watched as water pumped in from all sides.
“Surreal is the best way to describe it,” she said. “We could hear the wine bottles and the liquor bottles clanking around in the cabinet. We could hear the air bubbles in the water.”
Their home quickly was saturated with 4 feet of water.
They were evacuated by kayak the next morning.
Questions remain
Lake Conroe was built as a public water supply and usually sits at 201 feet above sea level, with several inches of wiggle room in case of a heavy rain.
In the days leading up to Harvey’s landfall on Aug. 25, river authority officials opted not to release water from the dam to increase storage capacity because they never do. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality discouraged the pre-releases, which officials said could have exacerbated downstream flooding during the storm.
By Aug. 27, however, so much rain had fallen that authorities announced they would begin controlled releases of the dam.
“With approximately six inches of rainfall across the watershed over the past 24 hours, the Lake Conroe water level has risen over seven inches,” a river authority news release stated.
The rate of release increased sharply as the lake level continued to rise. River authority officials would not comment on why they released the water at such a high and fast rate, but they noted at its peak, water was coming into the lake at a rate of 130,000 cfs.
“If the dam had not been built, the peak flows in the river would continue downstream unabated the way they do in the other watersheds that feed into the West Fork,” an authority news release stated. “Even though it was not designed for flood control, the Lake Conroe dam has significantly REDUCED downstream flooding for every major storm in the watershed since it was constructed in 1973.”
Jeff Lindner, Harris County Flood Control District meteorologist, said the Lake Conroe dam releases made up only about 40 percent of the water flowing down the West Fork at its peak. The rest came from runoff and rainfall.
“I want to emphasize that a lot of people point the finger at Lake Conroe, but the fact is Lake Conroe is only a fraction of the water that comes down,” Lindner said.
But Potts, the lawyer, said he doesn’t understand why officials opted for such a high release rate from Lake Conroe when the Addicks and Barker reservoirs released water at about 13,300 cfs.
“I’d like an explanation,” Potts said.
Also among those seeking answers is Poe, who last month filed legislation in Congress along with several other Texas congressman that would require a study of the controlled releases from all local dams, reservoirs and lakes.
Under his proposal, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — which oversees the Addicks and Barker dams — as well as the San Jacinto River Authority and the city of Houston, among others, would be required to release details about minimum water capacity, overflow levels, plans for emergency notifications and coordination among affected facilities.
The legislation also calls for recommendations for improving the infrastructure to prevent unplanned releases in the future.
If the measure is passed, Poe said, the public “will find out if (the river authority) followed their procedures. The water came really fast and rose fast.”
Taking the fight to court
The lawsuits filed contend the government intentionally took properties by flooding, causing damage that includes repair costs, loss of property values and loss of income or business income.
So far, more than 200 individuals are involved in Potts’ lawsuit, which is filed against the San Jacinto River Authority.
“The river authority’s action in releasing water from Lake Conroe was done with intent and it knew of the substantial risk of flooding damages to homes and businesses downstream from Lake Conroe,” the suit alleges.
Another lawsuit, filed by Raley & Bowick, also a Houston-based firm, involves more than 50 northeast Houston residents, who accuse the river authority and the Texas Water Development Board of not taking necessary steps in operating the reservoir and dam, which caused residents’ homes to flood.
The lawsuit says most residents were never informed that their homes would be flooded and likewise seeks compensation for damages. It also seeks an injunction to prevent future flooding of residents’ properties.
The San Jacinto River Authority won a lawsuit involving similar claims after an October 1994 storm, which prompted a thenrecord release of 33,360 cfs of water from the Lake Conroe dam. The suit was dismissed.
The authority released a recent statement addressing the latest lawsuits.
“While we understand the frustration and confusion many people are experiencing as a result of this natural disaster, we also know that allegations in lawsuits are not facts but simply what a lawyer chooses to claim,” the authority said in a statement posted on its website. “Despite the misinformation and speculation that has been circulated in the media, in the pending lawsuit, and elsewhere, the actual facts are that the Authority’s operation of the Lake Conroe dam was in accordance with both the law and a carefully prepared engineering plan that, among other things actually has the effect of reducing downstream peak flow as water passes through the lake from the San Jacinto River.”
Nearly 50 lawsuits have already been filed in the federal claims court over flooding from the Barker and Addicks reservoirs. The suits claim the Corps also knew downstream homes and businesses would flood if they let water out of the dams and that upstream homes would flood if they didn’t.
The so-called “takings” claims are similar to eminent domain proceedings in seeking compensation from the government for the damages.
‘Short-term memories’
On a recent Tuesday, Norris stepped around bags of trash, piles of debris and construction equipment littering the first floor of her home, pointing out what each room used to be before the floodwaters forced them to pull down drywall and rip up flooring.
She let out an exasperated sigh as she walked into what was once her kitchen, now completely gutted, and stared down at the floors. A few strips of hardwood were still there, waiting to be pulled up. She had salvaged each piece of wood from an old brewery — there’s no replacing that.
“I always have to do things the hard way,” she said.
When she and her husband bought the home seven years ago, they asked all the right questions. Did you flood during Hurricane Allison? Did you flood in 1994?
The answer, repeatedly, was no, she said. The couple purchased flood insurance anyway.
They’d never needed it before: until now.
Norris’ family currently is renting a home about a mile away while repairs are made. She expects it’ll be a year before they can return. Though other Kingwood residents have joined in the lawsuits, she said she hasn’t yet.
But as she lies awake at night wondering if the home will flood again, she said she hasn’t ruled it out.
“You never buy a flooded house, so who will ever want this?” she said. “Hopefully people have short-term memories.”
‘This is our inheritance’
Perkins had just started construction in 1994 on his home when flooding that year decimated their double-wide trailer.
So Perkins rebuilt higher, placing their new home on stilts 5 feet above the ground.
Staring out the window last week at the pile of trash they once called belongings, however, Perkins came to a grim realization: 5-foot stilts weren’t enough.
They have no intention of moving from the plot of land they’ve owned for 40 years, but they hope changes are made in how the river authority responds to flooding.
This land, Teresa Thompson, Deryl’s daughter, said, is all the family has.
“It doesn’t mean nothing to them guys up there lifting them gates, but this is our inheritance,” she said. “They worked hard to give us something when they died.”