Residents take buyout fight to court
With the urgent need to begin flood projects, Harris County eyes homes near Greens Bayou
More than two years after Hurricane Harvey dumped 4½ feet of water in his home in the Castlewood neighborhood of Aldine, Trinidad Hernandez is eager to see his new kitchen finished. Two workmen installed cabinets and granite countertops last month, part of a design by Hernandez’s brother.
But Hernandez acknowledges the remodel, which includes upgrades to the living room and bathrooms, may be pointless. Using eminent domain, Harris County is seeking to seize his and four other Castlewood properties, raze the buildings on them and convert their part of the neighborhood into a detention basin. Hernandez is fighting his case in court.
“We haven’t had a kitchen in two years, and we’re barely finishing it,” Hernandez said. “We’re going to maybe get to enjoy it for three months. That’s the stuff that makes you sick.”
The dispute offers a preview of difficult decisions ahead for the Harris County Flood Control District as it seeks to purchase thousands of homes in the flood plain, some of whose owners are reluctant to sever long-standing community ties and abandon residences that may have been in their families for generations. District officials argue such repeat-flood neighborhoods burden the government’s flood insurance program and are dangerous for first responders.
In the past four years, the county has purchased 467 flood plain homes through voluntary buyout programs. The $2.5 billion flood bond approved by voters in 2018 includes funds for about 3,600. In rare cases, the county seeks court approval to seize property via eminent domain.
In all, Harris County has more
than two-dozen active buyout areas, including along Clear Creek, White Oak Bayou and the San Jacinto River. Because they were started in the mid- 2000s, the Castlewood buyouts are among the furthest along.
Russ Poppe, the flood control district’s executive director, said the benefits from the Castlewood project outweigh the harm caused by displacing residents.
“Once we have everyone bought out there, we’ll have a large area where we can implement additional stormwater detention,” Poppe said. “The surrounding communities are very excited about this opportunity.”
A portion of the subdivision on the south bank of Greens Bayou is deep inside the 100-year flood plain, with some streets in the floodway itself. The risk of inundation is so high the flood control district has concluded that no mitigation project would adequately protect the neighborhood.
Since Tropical Storm Allison brought several feet of water to the neighborhood, the county has purchased most of this corner of Castlewood through a voluntary buyout program. Hernandez is one of a handful of residents resisting.
Hernandez’s one-story home, which he shares with his wife and four dogs, saw 4 feet of water in Allison. He said that the county’s buyout offer has been too low and that city and county officials have given conflicting messages about the extent of improvements required to Greens Bayou and whether his area would need to be razed. He’d held out hope it could be spared.
The couple remain hesitant to leave the home, where they raised their son, a Marine Corps veteran who now serves as a Harris County sheriff’s deputy. They’ve owned it since 2000.
Hernandez also said he has yet to find a suitable new property that could also accommodate the makeshift church he runs out of his home. He said he holds weekly Bible study classes and Sunday services for about 30 people.
“We’re outgrowing here,” Hernandez said, adding that congregants come from as far away as Cleveland and Colorado County.
A business by itself
Built in the 1960s, this northern portion of Castlewood was for decades an affordable neighborhood of single-family homes and small businesses. Cabinet-maker Mitchell Austin described the neighborhood before Allison as full of well-kept lawns where many residents lived down the street from their businesses.
Now it sits mostly abandoned, with some streets blocked by posts or piles of dirt. Weeds grow through cracks in the deteriorating asphalt. Stray cats slink through overgrown lots, wary of hawks lurking in trees. Mattresses, tires and other trash litter the ground.
Austin’s company, Austin Cabinet and Construction, sits alone on Lakemont Drive, along what used to be a row of businesses. He said the derelict neighborhood can feel eerie. Sternly worded signs from the sheriff fail to deter illegal dumpers, he said, and he’s tired of people shooting his mailbox with pellet guns.
“It’s a little bit scary to come over here at 3 a.m. when your alarm goes off, and the alarm company calls,” he said.
The workshop has flooded twice, which Austin downplays because his workers simply elevate all the equipment when a storm approaches and thus are able to reopen quickly. He understands why the flood control district needs to demolish the neighborhood, but he said that the buyout offered by the county is too low to cover the price of a new building and that renting would cut into his business. He hopes to strike a better deal with the help of a lawyer.
Still, he bristles at all the commercial development on the other side of Greens Bayou since he bought the Castlewood building in 1995. Austin said he suspects new warehouses, and their impervious parking lots, have made flooding in the area worse.
“Their water needs somewhere to go, and we just happen to be in a close proximity to where they can direct the water,” he said. “That was all woods 10 years ago.”
‘Not a safe place’
Indeed, residents in adjacent subdivisions are eagerly waiting for the northern part of Castlewood to be converted into a detention basin. The flood control district in 2016 decided to construct several detention basins along Greens Bayou, formally called the Mid-Reach Flood Damage Reduction Plan.
Connie Esparza, president of the Castlewood Civic Club, said 60 homes in the southern end of the neighborhood were swamped by Tropical Storm Imelda in September. Most were outside the 100year flood plain. She said the flood risk will be significantly lower once the project is complete.
“With the digging of the ditches, and the curbs and gutters, and the connection of the detention basins … I think we’ll certainly see a tremendous relief,” Esperza said.
Castlewood was built about 20 years before Harris County drew its first flood plain maps, one of many neighborhoods erected close to the Houston area’s unpredictable bayous. About 180,000 homes and other structures sit inside the current, inaccurate 100year flood plain — a figure that will likely surge when new flood plain maps are drawn that reflect higher rainfall totals from the Tax Day, Memorial Day and Harvey floods.
Buyouts are reserved for areas where no mitigation would be practical, said Poppe, the flood control district head. The county offers to purchase homes at market rate and provides funds for closing costs and relocation. Involuntary buyouts are a last resort, he said, taken only after years of negotiations have failed.
James Wade, the district’s buyouts manager, said the county must sometimes decide for residents that they can no longer live in dangerous flood zones.
“Are we being negligent by not putting a stop to it?” Wade said. “I think we are getting closer to being more aggressive and realizing it’s not a safe place. It’s a public safety issue.”
Hernandez seems resigned to his fate, even as he remarks with excitement at the backsplash tiles that workers have just installed in his kitchen. Even if the county does not claim his home, he acknowledges, history suggests it is only a matter of time before the bayou does.
“We’re not going to beat them,” Hernandez said. “We’re going to have to get out. But it’s worth a fight for me.”