A DIG AT CORPS’ PLAN
Calls to fix flooding with deeper bayou, third reservoir upset advocates
Sarah Bernhardt read the Army Corps of Engineers’ latest ideas on how to reduce flooding along Buffalo Bayou, feeling disappointed.
The agency had eliminated a proposed tunnel to carry water to the Houston Ship Channel because of cost. It nixed an option to expand the capacity of the Addicks and Barker reservoirs as not effective enough.
Instead, the Corps proposed digging Buffalo Bayou wider and deeper, or channelizing it. Officials also suggested building a hulking third dam and reservoir — right on the painstakingly protected Katy Prairie, a once-sprawling habitat that slows, cleans and stores water.
The agency looked at projects with
heft, analyzing cost versus benefit and howmany lives each might save. The sweeping study area and sheer scale of rainfall lent itself to large proposals, project manager Andrew Weber said.
But the approach dismayed conservationists such as Bernhardt, who leads an association fighting to protect the natural forms of the area’s bayous. She and others found the search for a single engineering solution antiquated. They thought channelization or the third reservoir would harm valued natural space.
“What we saw in this report,” Bernhardt said, “was just very old-fashioned.”
Corps engineers released the interim report for the Buffalo Bayou and Tributaries Resiliency Study in October. The agency is asking for community feedback through Friday to shape a final proposal.
Advocates have done just that. Calls were renewed for a naturebased plan. People puzzled over why the Corps wasn’t continuing to look at tunnels, considered less disruptive to communities, or excavating more dirt from the Addicks and Barker reservoirs, maybe building new park space on top.
They also wondered how property buyouts might fit in.
Steve Robinson, a partner with Allen Boone Humphries Robinson, discussed the report with some 20 community groups. His law firm works with Houston Stronger, a coalition formed to address flooding. Robinson saw no neighborhood or development groups support the plan — a problem, because it will require local sponsorship.
The likely local sponsor is the Harris County Flood Control District, whichwould have to pay for a portion of a final project. Congressional approval would also be needed.
Russ Poppe, the district’s executive director, said he sees community feedback as integral to developing a plan with “appropriate regard for community natural values” that the district could get behind.
Any project would be funded separately from the 181 local projects paid for by the $2.5 billion bond approved by Harris County voters after Hurricane Harvey. The region’s flooding issues stretch well beyond Buffalo Bayou. Fewof the projects have been finished so far.
The county has taken other steps to reduce future flooding, updating standards for how homes in the flood plain are built and buying hundreds of properties that repeatedly flood. But the county doesn’t control the federally owned Addicks and Barker reservoirs and dams. And it doesn’t plan to buy properties upstream of them.
County and city officials over the years permitted construction of 30,000 suburban homes and businesses in Katy and west Houston at the edge of the two reservoirs, ignoring studies that predicted they were vulnerable to flooding. Many homeowners didn’t know the risk of where they lived.
After Harvey, a federal judge found the Corps liable for what was essentially a human-engineered disaster, ruling engineers knew what could happen there for years. Evidence showed Corps officials repeatedly declined to buy additional at-risk properties above the reservoirs.
Pressure is on to address problems with the high-risk dams, a centerpiece of the region’s flood control strategy. Some sort of federal fix is the way to do that. As Houston Stronger organizer Auggie Campbell put it, “That risk that we had in Harvey is still there, unless we get some sort of federal project.”
Reused ideas
Corps engineers began work on this study in 2018, a year after Harvey dumped more than 50 inches of rain on parts of the region and pushed the Addicks and Barker dams to the brink.
Properties flooded as water backed up behind the dams into the flood pool. The Corps began releasing water to prevent against possible dam failure, flooding more homes downstream as water surged along Buffalo Bayou.
Requested by the Harris County Flood Control District even before Harvey hit, the study was an attempt at last to address those structures and the flooding associated with them.
The Addicks and Barker reservoirs were built in the 1940s to prevent catastrophic loss of life during heavy rainfall, with a third reservoir, canals and a proposal to enlarge and straighten the bayou meant to follow. The additional reservoir and canals stalled because of development and cost.
Terry Hershey, pioneer of Houston’s conservation movement, defeated the previously proposed “channelization.” (She helped form the Bayou Preservation Association, which Bernhardt now leads as CEO and president.) Hershey died in 2017 at age 94.
Hers was a rare victory in a city where conservation usually loses, said Jim Blackburn, co-director of the SSPEED Center at Rice University, which researches flooding. But population increased. Development continued. Intense rainfall events became more likely because of climate change.
Now, 60 years later, channelization and that third reservoir are back on the table. The Corps’ report also explores property buyouts, downstream and upstream.
To see channelization return, Blackburn said, “has caused a lot of people to rally in opposition.” The Corps says it is not proposing a concrete-lined channel like Brays Bayou but says it would use some type of armoring system to prevent erosion in some areas. What type and where had not been decided.
Environmentalists want to protect a natural space that has survived urbanization.
Missed opportunity
At first, the Corps seemed to see the study as a chance to be creative, said Jordan Macha, executive director of Bayou City Waterkeeper, which works to protect wetlands and improve water quality.
Engineers think differently now about how to solve flooding, evaluating not only what a structure does but also howit fits within a community. They might use pocket prairies, restored wetlands or smaller detention ponds.
Advocates argue nature-based solutions have the added benefits of creating recreational space, reducing air pollution and improving water quality. Macha was surprised to see the Army Corps put forward essentially no such proposal.
“Why are we still looking back to these old solutions that haven’t really changed at all?” she asked.
The Corps was aware of strong support for nature-based features, the report said. And part of the process going forward would be “incorporating natural and nature-based features into any recommend(ed) plan,” Weber wrote in his statement.
Evaluating environmental impacts will be required of any plan that is selected. In the report, the Corps said it aimed to preserve the bayou’s “natural integrity” with terracing. It thought the Katy Prairie was the best place for the reservoir, even if it “would significantly alter and degrade” the habitat.
Mary Anne Piacentini, president and CEO of the Katy Prairie Conservancy, said she had expected Corps engineers to listen more to thecommunity. Piacentini had suggested the Corps expand the prairie, build mini-reservoirs along creeks and pay farmers to detain water.
She isn’t the only one fighting for what her organization exists to protect: Jeff Taylor, chairman of the Buffalo Bayou Partnership, worries channelization would destroy the bayou’s natural shape and damage Buffalo Bayou Park, a popular 160-acre green urban space, especially in the pandemic.
“We simply don’t want that to be lost,” he said.