REDUCING THE RISK A new report from engineering rm Jones & Carter recommended 22 stormwater detention basins be added to the Cypress Creek watershed, including several in Cy-Fair. Experts estimate these basins would reduce the risk of ooding for thousands of local structures.
BUILDING THE BASINS Flood control district o cials said it will take years to complete the projects in the Cypress Creek Program Implementation Plan, and funding will be secured throughout the process. SOURCE: HARRIS COUNTY FLOOD CONTROL DISTRICT COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
A Telge and Pleasant Grove roads Potential basin volume: 290 acre- feet, or 94.5 million gallons Estimated cost: $15.9 million Construction start (pending funding): 2027 Potential structures removed from 100-year ood plain: 634 B Cypresswood and Jones roads (four basins) Potential basin volume: 1,060 acre- feet, or 345.6 million gallons Estimated cost: $56.5 million Construction start (pending funding): 2025 Potential structures removed from 100-year ood plain: 737 C Cypress Park extension Potential basin volume: 4,620 acre- feet, or 1.5 billion gallons Estimated cost: $185.5 million Construction start (pending funding): 2027 Potential structures removed from 100-year ood plain: 868 D Faulkey Gully (not recommended) Potential basin volume: 1,480 acre- feet, or 482.5 million gallons Estimated cost: $358.7 million Construction start: N/A Potential structures removed from 100-year ood plain: 83 partnership funding, long-term main- tenance costs, environmental e ects and the potential for multiple bene- ts, according to the report. Cypress-area projects in the top pri- ority tier include a group of four basins at Cypresswood and Jones roads as well as the extension of a basin at Cypress Park. Construction is expected to begin in 2025 and 2027, respectively. Another basin is slated for construc- tion in 2027 near Telge and Pleasant Grove roads, according to the report. Combined, these projects should remove more than 2,200 structures from the 100-year ood plain. A basin proposed in the Faulkey Gully area was deemed infeasible because it would have cost $358.7 mil- lion and only bene ted about 83 struc- tures. Six basins are slated to move forward in the Cy-Fair area along with 16 in the Spring area. Ultimately, 22 of the 23 sites were recommended in the prioritization process. According to the report, these basins combined would hold about 12,800 acre-feet—or 4.17 billion gallons—of excess stormwater. Michael Baker International’s Cypress Creek Watershed Major Trib- utaries Regional Drainage Plan update from February 2020 recommended about 26,500 acre-feet of stormwater detention be added to the watershed,
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Stormwater detention basins
Spring Creek
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PRELIMINARY ENGINEERING
Little Cypress Creek
Cypress Creek
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Greens Bayou
SOURCES: HARRIS COUNTY FLOOD CONTROL DISTRICT, JONES & CARTER COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
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White Oak Bayou
Dunn got involved with her home- owners association, local ooding groups and her municipal utility dis- trict to ght for solutions. “We have all these new young families that look just like I did; I was a young bride when I came and just wanted to raise a family, and it’s beautiful out in the woods,” she said. “And now these people have the same dreams I had, … and I don’t want it to turn into a nightmare.” Dunn and thousands of other Cy-Fair residents could soon nd relief from ooding once a new plan for the watershed is implemented. In July 2020, Harris CountyCommis- sioners Court approved a $1.4 million agreement for engineering rm Jones & Carter to develop the Cypress Creek Program Implementation Plan, which was released in January and recom- mended nearly two dozen stormwa- ter detention basins be added to the Cypress Creek watershed. These recommendations would help reduce ood risks for more than 3,000 structures between Hwy. 290 and the Hardy Toll Road over the next several years, according to the report. The projects are expected to cost $597.1 million, and ood control dis- trict o cials are working to identify funding sources. If these proposed basins are all added, engineering o cials in the report estimate 39% of structures would be removed from the 10-year ood plain, 21% would be removed from the 50-year ood plain and 19% would be removed from the 100-year ood plain. Structures in these ood plains have a 10%, 2%and 1%chance of ooding in any givenyear, respectively. Since Harvey, the Harris County FloodControlDistricthascompletedor
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Halls Bayou
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i n i t i - ated sev- eral mitigation projects and studies. More than $291 million
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OPERATIONS & MAINTENANCE
of the $2.5 billion ood bond Harris County voters approved in 2018 was set aside for Cypress Creek projects, including home buyouts, maintenance work to restore channel conveyance capacity, storm debris removal, drain- age infrastructure repairs and deten- tion basins. Jonathan St. Romain, a department manager with the HCFCD, said storm- water detention basins are more e ective than channel modi cations. Detention basins temporarily store stormwater until it can make its way back into a nearby channel. Most of the projects would be multipurpose. “We understand that communities need and desire these projects as well that allow for ood risk reduction while at the same time, you know, it sort of is common sense that you can look at a detention basin that is this open area of land that is … good and useful to put trails around and to pro- vide pockets of parks and other fea- tures,” St. Romain said. Basin basics The Cypress Creek Program Imple- mentation Plan evaluated 49 poten- tial stormwater detention basin sites before narrowing the list down to 23 basins distributed throughout 11 areas along Cypress Creek. Factors weighed in the prioriti- zation process included ood risk reduction, existing condition, project e ciency, social vulnerability index,
which would be enough space to store 8.6 billion gallons of water. An additional 30,000 acre-feet, or nearly 9.8 billion gallons of water, is recommended upstream in the Little Cypress Creek subwatershed. St. Romain said while adding 56,500 acre-feet of detention is feasi- ble, it would take years to achieve. “That’s really the reason we have this plan is to have a long-term road map so that we can get there, but everybody—us included—we’ve got to understand that kind of scale can’t happen quickly,” he said. Mitigation e orts Jim Robertson, who serves on the board of directors for the Cypress Creek Flood Control Coalition, was pleased to see a prioritized list where detention basins could be located—a rst for the watershed, he said. Eric Heppen, who works on the technical sta for Harris County Pre- cinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey, said while getting structures out of the 100-year ood plain is critical, the commissioner’s approach to ood mitigation is to act now and help as many residents as possible. “Residents want to know, ‘For that two-year storm, that 10-year storm that truly happens more frequently, am I protected?’ We do try to do the
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