Disaster ‘could have been much, much worse’
Experts say flood control work since Allison saved many areas
As hundreds of southwest Houston residents continued to clean up and salvage belongings from inundated homes, Harris County’s top flood control official said Thursday that the problem might have been far worse had it not been for improvements on nearby Brays Bayou — projects that have been in the works for decades.
“As tragic as the flooding and the loss of life was, it could have been much, much worse,” said Mike Talbott, the head of the county flood control district. “The work done on Brays Bayou probably saved 1,000 structures from having water in them.”
Yet the effort, known as Project Brays, now is scheduled for completion in 2022 if current funding levels continue — eight years later than originally projected. City Councilman Larry Green, who represents the neighborhoods with the most flooded homes, blamed the delays on inadequate federal funding and said homes might have been spared had the work proceeded faster. He said the Westbury neighborhood
alone had more than 300 flooded houses.
“I’m pleased to hear the mitigation work is happening, but that does nothing to ease the loss for hundreds of residents near Brays Bayou west of the Medical Center,” Green said. “The streets were backed up because there was nowhere for the water to go. Had the original schedule been kept, we wouldn’t have had this problem because we would have had capacity.”
$1.7 billion spent
The county and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have spent $1.7 billion on flood control projects since 2001, the year when Tropical Storm Allison caused catastrophic flooding in the Houston area. This sum includes $300 million for improvements in the Brays Bayou watershed, where the most serious residential flooding occurred in this week’s storms. The county and the Army Corps of Engineers split the costs 50-50, although in many cases the county pays up front and awaits reimbursement.
Talbott said the federal government has never failed to reimburse the county. He said the delays were caused by lawsuits and the complicated logistics of buying land and getting the excavation and construction done.
The problem with such flood control initiatives has been that the county tackles more than it has funding to fulfill, said Jim Blackburn, an environmental attorney who has been involved in litigation with the flood control district.
“I think they over-promise,” Blackburn said. “Land costs go up. The initial projections of cost, by the time they get around to building it, by the time they get around to collecting money, are not enough to build the facilities they’re needing.”
The agency uses a variety of strategies to limit flood damage. It blocks new construction in perilous areas and uses federal dollars to buy homes at high risk; widens and excavates bayous and streams to increase capacity; and lengthens, raises or replaces bridges. The county also has excavated detention basins, many beneath county parks, that can sustain massive quantities of water that would otherwise gush downstream during heavy rainstorms.
Improvements along Brays Bayou since 2001 include the completion of a 112-acre detention basin underneath Arthur Storey Park and a 40-acre detention pond at Mike Driscoll Park at Old Westheimer Road.
The 400-acre excavation for detention storage beneath Bishop Firenze Park, near Texas 6, is 90 percent complete. And excavation for water storage compartments at Willow Waterhole south of Meyerland in Westbury is about 50 percent complete.
The Brays Bayou work has proceeded from east to west. To date, Project Brays has widened 12.3 miles of channel and repaired or replaced 10 bridges east of Texas 288 near the Medical Center. Crews still have to do another 10 miles of channel construction and 20 bridges to finish up to Fondren.
Other areas of Houston also benefited from the district’s work during this week’s floods, Talbott said.
Along White Oak Bayou, the area near Allen’s Landing downtown got the most rainfall, but catastrophic flooding was avoided due to 7.5 miles of channel improvements, a bypass channel along the north side of Jersey Village and 10 detention basins, he said.
Talbott said Sims Bayou improvements also provided a huge return on the county’s investment. It took 10 years to complete $290 million in work with the Corps of Engineers, he said, but no homes in the Sims watershed flooded this week, while many have been inundated repeatedly in previous deluges.
The flood control agency has also bought 250 lowlying homes along Cypress Creek. Many of those homes would have flooded, according to agency projections.
Progress noted
Evelyn Merz, conservation chair of the Houston Sierra Club, observes these flood patterns closely. She said her home abuts Sims Bayou and she has seen a big difference: “We have more detention. The buyouts made a difference. There are less structures to flood and more permeable surface.”
This week, “the systems worked extraordinarily,” Talbott said, and flooding occurred simply because so much rain fell so quickly that streams exceeded their capacity.
“It carried all the water it was supposed to carry, but it couldn’t carry as much as nature gave us,” he said.
In addition, the county experiences much more street flooding than bayou flooding, according to Blackburn. He said the county’s downfall may be its failure to educate the public about how flood control works: “I don’t think we talk honestly about this issue.”
Many factors influence how and where flooding occurs, and not every scenario can be addressed by detention ponds or widening of channels.
Talbott said he has learned that ultimately, nature prevails.