County to expedite work on flood jobs
Harris County Commissioners Court on Tuesday agreed to speed up flood protection projects in 105 subdivisions that were battered by Hurricane Harvey but are outside mapped floodplains.
The $60 million commitment empowers the Harris County Flood Control District to complete the work in four rather than 5½ years. The 86 projects are part of more than 230 in the county’s $2.5 billion flood bond program, which voters approved last August, the one-year anniversary of Harvey’s devastating landfall.
“We’re cutting the time by a third, saving ourselves one or two hurricane seasons,” County Judge Lina Hidalgo said.
The abridged process is possible because court members agreed to spend local funds to begin designing the projects, rather than waiting on matching federal funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, County Engineer John Blount said.
“Normally, we’d have to wait a year or year and a half from HUD,” Blount said before the vote. “What I’m proposing is, we go ahead upfront and pay for those … so when the HUD funding comes, we’re not asking for design money; we’re asking for construction funding.”
The county risks losing $37 million that might not be reimbursed, though Blount said engineers concluded the expense was worthwhile since neighborhoods would be protected more quickly.
Hidalgo said county engineers concluded the subdivisions, all in unincorporated Harris County, flooded during Harvey not from overflowing bayous but poor drainage. Nearly three-quarters of the more than 204,000 county homes and apartments that flooded in the storm were outside
mapped floodplains, a testament to the Harvey’s scope and the outdated data on which the maps are based.
When the flood control district and Federal Emergency Management Agency complete new floodplain maps in 2021, homeowners in many of the subdivisions might find themselves inside their boundaries.
The subdivisions include about 10,000 homes spread across the county, including Bear Creek Village, Williamsburg Colony, Meadow Lake, Apache Land, Almeda Heights, Cypress Creek Estates, Creel Country, Ralston Acres, Northlake Forest, Barrett Station, Skeetville, McKenzie Park and Barwood.
Commissioners Court members have searched for ways to speed up the bond program, which originally was projected to take 10 to 15 years to complete. They face a vexing problem, as no matter how quickly the program proceeds, residents whose neighborhood projects are scheduled for completion last likely will be upset.
At the court’s June 25 meeting, flood control district Executive Director Russ Poppe said the bond projects could be completed as quickly as 8½ years. A faster-paced program could lead to higher construction and labor costs, he warned.
Tuesday’s vote to speed up the subdivision projects was unanimous. Court members also were united in approving updated floodplain development rules based on new rainfall data compiled by the federal government, called Atlas 14, which incorporates Harvey.
The changes expand the area covered by flood-related building restrictions by about 65 percent in parts of the county outside the city of Houston. Effective immediately, the restrictions require developers to devote a larger share of their properties to holding back stormwater, among other changes. Projects that already have been permitted are exempt.
A group of developers, builders and engineers quietly had lobbied Hidalgo and commissioners to delay the vote, arguing the process had been rushed and citing concerns about the new flood modeling data on which the changes are based. Court members had postponed implementation of the new rules from a June 4 meeting but refused to wait further.
“Time of is of urgency,” Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia said. “We need to get these rules in place.”
The county and the city of Houston originally planned to adopt the same rules in early June, but the city has not yet set a date for city council to consider the measure.