Mayoral candidate calls for investigation into Meyerland flooding.

Mayoral candidate Chris Bell on Sunday called for an independent investigation into why so many Meyerland homes flooded during the heavy Memorial Day weekend rains.

Surrounded by about two dozen residents at a news conference by Brays Bayou, Bell said it was important to figure out why infrastructure projects in the area didn’t prevent major flooding and why others were not completed on schedule. Bell challenged the assertion, backed by engineering experts, that flooding was inevitable considering some areas were hit with more than 10 inches overnight.

“The least we are owed is an explanation of what happened,” said Bell, a former congressman and city councilman who lives in Meyerland.

Bell called for an outside investigation, saying that a forthcoming report by the Harris County Flood Control District would be “biased” because the agency helped design projects in the area as part of the city’s drainage and streets program, ReBuild Houston. A spokesperson for the agency could not be reached Sunday.

Pay-as-you-go program

Bell is not the first of the seven mayoral candidates to criticize the city’s ReBuild Houston initiative, the pay-as-you-go program that voters approved in 2010, in the wake of the Memorial Day flooding. Many of the candidates vying to replace term-limited Mayor Annise Parker have seized on the flooding to criticize the city’s infrastructure or talk about speeding up flood mitigation efforts.

During Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, Brays Bayou flooding all but crippled the Medical Center, rendering roads impassable and seeping into building basements.

In the wake of that damage, the Harris County Flood Control District headed a massive multimillion dollar project to help prevent future Brays Bayou flooding. The project calls for widening and deepening the bayou’s channel, modifying its bridges and creating four detention basins to hold excess stormwater.

Lag in funding

Though those improvements were lauded for helping to protect the Medical Center during last month’s Memorial Day flooding, some public officials and residents have decried the speed of the work; the project originally was set to be finished last year but now it’s more likely to wrap up in 2021.

Some southwest neighborhoods lie in areas where the flood mitigation work still remains incomplete or is not yet underway.

County flood district officials have blamed the lag on delayed federal funding and difficulty making land acquisitions, among other problems. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the county split the costs 50-50, although in many cases the county pays first and then waits for reimbursement.

“I can assure you that if you watch three feet of water rise in your home, and you watch as your walls, and your furnishings, and your memories are washed away, it will always be a priority and it will never fall from the radar screen,” Bell said. “It is incumbent upon all of us — the city of Houston, the county, and all of my neighbors that have been affected — to bring as much pressure to bear going forward as possible to make sure that flood control and drainage never falls off the radar screen ever again.”