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Cities must follow building standards to access $2.5B bond
Harris County Commissioners Court voted this week to restrict flood bond projects to municipalities that meet its flood plain development standards, effectively forcing the 34 cities within its borders to adopt stricter rules to access the $2.5 billion pot approved by voters two years ago.
The policy change is meant to protect the county’s largest-ever investment in flood control infrastructure and create uniformity in building rules, following the principle that cities should not permit development than can worsen flooding for their neighbors.
“The goal isn’t to punish anybody,” County Engineer John Blount said. “It’s to announce, ‘Hey, these are the minimum standards we think you should enforce.’ ”
By the end of this year, cities must set minimum detention rules for new development, prohibit builders from filling in the 500-year flood plain and base standards on the newest rainfall rates, among other requirements.
Many, including the city of Houston, already have updated their rules. County flood plain experts are available to help the remaining cities do so, Blount said.
Some of the smallest cities have few new construction projects and have not updated their building rules for years. For example, Hilshire Village, a residential community occupying 0.3 square miles off Interstate 10 in west Houston, last changed its drainage rules in 2007. City Administrator Susan Blevins said she would ask City Council to make whatever changes are necessary to comply with the county’s new requirements.
The challenge is greater in larger municipalities such as Tomball
in north Harris County, which also has commercial development that can displace more stormwater. Craig Meyers, the city’s flood plain manager, said he understood the need to protect downstream communities from flooding.
He said no Harris County officials had warned him the changes were coming, however, and they would require the city to make significant amendments to its development rules.
“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” Meyers said. “We don’t regulate to the extent Harris County does in the 500-year flood plain. … There are many things that Tomball is not compatible with.”
Bellaire City Manager Paul Hoffman said he likewise was blindsided by the Commissioners Court action. Hurricane Harvey flooded about 2,000 structures in the city, most of which lies inside the 100-year flood plain.
Hoffman said an analysis showed all but about 50 of those buildings were built to a lower elevation than the city’s standard of 1 foot above the 100-year flood plain level, suggestion the existing rules are effective. The county requirement passed Tuesday, however, calls for new structures
to be built to the 500-year level, which could be several inches higher, depending on flood plain maps.
Bellaire stands to significantly benefit from flood bond projects in the Brays Bayou watershed, Hoffman said, where the flood control district has committed $216 million. City Council ultimately will decide how to proceed.
“We certainly understand the flood plain calculations are changes, and that we’ll need to pay attention to that,” Hoffman said. “But we have not amended our standards.”
Blount, the county engineer, said he soon will send a letter to each municipality explaining the changes and offering free consulting to help cities change their rules.
County Judge Lina Hidalgo said forcing small cities to improve their standards helps them avoid conflict with developers who may oppose the changes. Harris County already haggled with the building community over upgrading its own rules last year.
“This gives them the opportunity to point to us and say, ‘Look, it’s the county that’s making us do this,’ ” Hidalgo said. “Hopefully, this will take some of the politics out of that.”
Leaders of the Greater Houston
Builders Association, which represents more than 1,600 residential firms, did not respond to a request for comment.
Creating consistency in building standards eliminates confusion for builders, said Russ Poppe, executive director of the Harris County Flood Control District. It also can convince funding partners — particularly the deeppocketed federal government — that the Houston area is serious about flood mitigation and a worthy recipient of grants.
“At the end of the day, we have 22 different watersheds,” Poppe said. “We shouldn’t have 34 different cities with all these different criteria out there, complicating things,”
Harris County voters approved the flood bond in August 2018, exactly one year after Hurricane Harvey, which pushed county leaders to draft the proposal. Combined with federal matching funds, the more than 240 projects represent about $5 billion in infrastructure improvements, by far the largest program in the 83year history of the flood control district.
Engineers have begun work on 204 projects, representing about $3 billion in investment.