The aftermath of HARVEY In the ve years since Hurricane Harvey struck the Gulf Coast, the Harris County Flood Control District has initiated 181 projects included in the $2.5 billion bond passed in 2018. This timeline is not comprehensive.
January 2022
2021
Jones & Carter recommends 22 potential stormwater detention sites along the creek between Hwy. 290 and the Hardy Toll Road estimated to cost more than $597 million.
January
Extreme rain event swales are constructed on six buyout lots in the Cypress Creek watershed.
January 2020
Cypress Creek tributary major maintenance work is completed after construction began in October 2018.
SOURCE: HARRIS COUNTY FLOOD CONTROL DISTRICT COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
June
January 2019
June
The HCFCD presents the ndings of a feasibility study on underground ood tunnels which estimates the cost of the tunnels to be $30 billion . Cypress Creek/Little Cypress Creek and the White Oak Bayou are included as entry sites.
Construction begins on the rst batch of major desilt
January 2018
and repair sites for Cypress Creek for $13.43 million .
Harris County approves an agreement with a rm to manage a countywide ood hazard assessment with new rainfall data to produce the county’s most comprehensive set of ood hazard maps.
February
2017 August
The 2003 Texas Water Development Board Cypress Creek Tributary Study, which was initiated in 2018, is completed.
Work begins on Little Cypress Creek tributary channel improvements.
September
Hurricane Harvey makes landfall near Rockport as a Category 4 hurricane.
Construction begins on a second set of major maintenance projects on nine channels along Cypress Creek.
June
November
The HCFCD is approved to submit federal grant applications: $25.7 million for the Little Cypress Creek Frontier Program and
The HCFCD announces $74 million in Harvey damages have been repaired at more than 800 sites. Construction begins
September
April
city, which saw about 235 homes impacted by the Tax Day ood of 2016. City Manager Austin Bleess said in the after- math of the 2016 ooding event, the city commis- sioned a long-term ood recovery plan, which recommended four major projects: channel modi - cations in the White Oak Bayou watershed, a berm around the city’s golf course, Wall Street neighbor- hood drainage improvements and home elevations. The city has partnered with the HCFCD as well as state and federal partners to fund these projects. Channel modi cations are expected to wrap up by the end of this year, Bleess said, and the berm and Wall Street projects were mostly completed in June. The city identi ed about 160 home elevation candi- dates, and 21 homes have been elevated so far. “We’re doing our best that we can as a city to max- imize what we can do to bring federal funds into Jer- sey Village to help mitigate future ooding,” he said. The bond also allocated $20 million for a study to determine the feasibility of constructing under- ground tunnels to move stormwater from ood cen- ters to a larger body of water. The HCFCD completed Phase 2 of the study in June and estimated a system of eight tunnels would cost $30 billion. The report indicated construction costs for tun- nel alignments for Little Cypress Creek and Cypress Creek and for White Oak Bayou could cost around $3.63 billion and $2.45 billion, respectively, stating they would take around ve to six years to build. “[A] tunnel would capture that water farther upstream and move it down through that section where the greatest amount of ooding has happened and provide some ood relief,” Robertson said. Innovative solutions Local community group Cypress Creek Flooding Task Force is seeking to ght ooding in the watershed by creating a new drainage district. The district would be on the ballot for voters in the November 2023 elec- tion since the earliest the district could be submitted as legislation for discussion is in the upcoming 88th
The Harris County Flood Control District begins collecting thousands of “notice of voluntary interest” forms from
$400,000 for the Stormwater Tunnel Feasibility Study.
Construction begins on the Fairbanks North Houston stormwater detention basin in the White Oak Bayou watershed.
August
homeowners interested in home buyouts.
A $2.5 billion bond is approved
on White Oak Bayou channel modi cation.
for the HCFCD with about 86% of voters supporting the measure on Harvey’s rst anniversary.
Making progress One of the rst projects executed from the bond was an update of a 2003 regional drainage plan for Cypress Creek. Robertson, who also serves on the board of the Cypress Creek Flood Control Coalition, said the local nonpro t advocated for this updated study to re ect the present needs of the community. The new study was released in early 2020 and recommended about 8.6 billion gallons of stormwa- ter detention be added to the Cypress Creek water- shed. An additional 9.8 billion gallons of stormwater detention was recommended upstream for the Little Cypress Creek subwatershed. Robertson said funding for these e orts was not necessarily included in the bond since the updated study came later, but he was pleased to see $291 mil- lion of the bond set aside for Cypress Creek. “Our view is that Cypress Creek has been under- funded through the decades for addressing the issues that we face in the watershed, and Cypress Creek did get more funding in the bond issue than historically what we’ve seen,” he said. Another Cypress Creek study was released this year by engineering rm Jones & Carter. It recom- mended 22 stormwater detention basins along Cypress Creek between Hwy. 290 in Cypress and the Hardy Toll Road in Spring. The projects are expected to cost $597.1 million over the next several years, and o cials are working to identify funding sources. While Hurricane Harvey mostly spared Jersey Vil- lage from ooding, the 2018 bond brought an oppor- tunity for much-needed mitigation work in the
IMMEDIATE IMPACT Estimates show Hurricane Harvey was the second- costliest hurricane in American history. HURRICANE HARVEY CAUSED:
154,170 ooded homes countywide, including
$125 BILLION in damage 36 ood- related deaths 600,000 ooded vehicles countywide
9,450 in Cypress Creek and Little Cypress Creek watersheds
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To supplement the $2.5 billion in bond funding, which becomes available to the district over time, the HCFCD anticipated receiving an additional $2.5 billion from grants and local partnerships. But in May 2021, the Texas General Land O ce excluded Harris County from an expected $1 billion in federal funding, leaving the district with a funding gap. “[The bond] was presented very fairly to people that this $2.5 billion is a lot of money, and we’re going to seek matching funds for that, but this is just a step in the right direction. It’s going to take much more than that to adequately reduce ooding,” said Jim Robertson, the chair of the Cypress Creek Gre- enway Project, which aims to connect green spaces along the creek and mitigate ooding.
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COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER • COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM
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