Harvey propels surge in activism

Fort Bend County residents unite to avert flooding repeat

Like their neighbors in Houston, residents in sprawling, suburban Fort Bend County realized the hard way during Hurricane Harvey how vulnerable their homes were to flooding.

It was a wake-up call to many, especially after major flooding events in 2016 and 2015. And they were not going to wait around for public officials to tell them why Harvey caused such extensive damage.

Residents across the fastgrowing suburban county — and indeed, throughout the region — are taking matters into their own hands as the next hurricane season approaches, studying flood plains, rallying their neighbors and learning which agencies have what responsibilities to protect them.

Among them are more than 130 residents in one Fort Bend County watershed who formed an association to advocate for improvements. They figured joining forces would give them more sway. This past week, they met with public officials to voice their rising concerns.

In two other Fort Bend neighborhoods, homeowners researched the so-called levee improvement districts that maintain the levees engineered to keep their houses dry. They elected new board members to each district last weekend, rather than let county commissioners continue to appoint them.

Both are following in the footsteps of groups like the Cypress Creek Flood Control Coalition in Harris County, which formed in 1999. Residents there advocated for developing accurate flood maps and, after Harvey, helped to lobby for federal funding for disaster relief.

Dick Smith, president of the coalition, said the organization now includes more than 100 homeowner associations and several municipal utility dis-

tricts.

“When we first organized, there was a lot of discussion of whether to be proactive or political activists,” said Smith, 82, whose home flooded during Harvey. “We made a decision to be proactive and work with the government.”

Local officials in Fort Bend concede that change after Harvey has been slow — but they say it’s out of necessity. County commissioners on May 1 voted to look for a firm to study how water flows across the jurisdiction and to consider how future development could affect that.

The study is not expected to be finished before the end of 2019, and the county plans to use the information to shape a potential $250 million bond election.

“We have to know, as quickly as possible, what projects make sense,” County Judge Bob Hebert said in a statement. “Voters won’t approve that amount of debt unless we do our homework.”

Meanwhile, the city of Houston recently tightened its rules for where and how new homes can be built. And Gov. Greg Abbott cleared the way for a multibillion-dollar bond election to take place in Harris County on Aug. 25, the one-year anniversary of Harvey making landfall on the Texas coast, to pay for projects to address future flooding.

Harvey dumped more than 50 inches of rain on some parts of the Houston area, causing historic flooding while leaving more than 80 dead across the state. The storm and its aftermath also damaged more than 6,800 homes in Fort Bend County, according to county data, prompting thousands of rescues from flooded subdivisions as thousands more evacuated their homes. It was frightening, but not entirely unfamiliar: the county also experienced major floods in the spring of 2015 and 2016.

Sharing their concerns

Jean-Charles Ginestra, a 64-year-old retired engineer, lived in one of the homes that Harvey flooded. His house, in a neighborhood called Woods Edge, had never before had water in it since he moved there in 1995. He began talking with local officials in October and ran for a seat on his homeowners association board in January.

Ginestra realized other neighbors shared his concerns and decided to bring subdivisions together. He spearheaded the effort to form an association among his neighbors from more than 30 subdivisions in the Jones Creek Watershed. They called it the Jones Creek Association.

“We started realizing that we’re only one subdivision,” Ginestra said. “We could get more clout if we networked with other subdivisions.”

The association met Wednesday at Christ’s Church Foster Creek in Richmond, the county seat. There, Ginestra talked about the watershed and the residents’ goals, which include improving drainage channels to the Brazos River and creating regional parks to serve as flood detention centers.

“We understand that nothing is going to get done before hurricane season starts in three weeks,” Ginestra said to the crowd. “But, everybody is pretty leery about what we’re going to see this year.”

Chris Elam, an intergovernmental relations manager for the Precinct 3 county commissioner, and Mark Vogler, who oversees the Fort Bend County Drainage District, were there listening. They talked about measures that the county was working on, including the study of the Jones Creek watershed, ongoing since 2014, and the study of the flow of water across the entire county.

“We’ve analyzed these things in the past based on the technology we had and the criteria we had at that time, but things are changing,” Vogler said. “So, we want to re-look with some modeling technology we have today at the Brazos River.”

Elsewhere in Fort Bend, residents took up a different fight.

A patchwork of 20 locally managed levee systems protects about 143,000 Fort Bend County residents, roughly 20 percent of the county’s population. Homes in seven of those levee districts flooded during Harvey as rain poured down and the Brazos River topped its banks.

Three county-appointed board members, until now, ran each levee improvement district. Residents in two of them where homes flooded — the New Territory community and Riverstone — voted to change that.

It had been a long process to get there: residents researched the rules in the state water code after Harvey hit, circulated a petition and looked for candidates to run. They voted May 5 with little opposition to expand the levee district boards from three board members to five and to pick the members themselves.

This felt like victory: “The LID 19 residents have spoken loud and clear that they need a change!” one organizer wrote in an email after the election. A second district in Riverstone, LID 15, plans to hold an election in November.

Citizens get involved

Iterations of citizen involvement go on: There’s the group “Residents Against Flooding,” with members from west Houston, that took to the court systems in 2016 to sue the city of Houston and a tax increment reinvestment zone, alleging that detention basins should be developed. The case is on appeal; some homes flooded again during Harvey.

Sometimes it’s just one person, such as Dale Westbrook, 58, a retired engineer who lives in Englewood Place. After Harvey, he noticed that water was not draining as it should from the golf course nearby. He saw that an underground passageway for the water was clogged, an issue he believed could affect communities in the future.

Westbrook raised the issue with the city engineer in Sugar Land, he said, and kept after it until, on Thursday, he saw — to his delight — that the area was cleared.

“Someone has to fight,” he said. “This is a big improvement. This is a solution to everything that I was hoping to have happen.”

Elam said the commissioner’s office has been getting more calls from concerned residents since Hurricane Harvey drenched the region last summer. He encouraged those who attended the Wednesday meeting to stay engaged despite frustration at the slow process.

“From our experience, we know this could be a long fight, and it requires unity from this area,” Elam said. “This community needs to keep up the political pressure for many years.”