Boxes for Bags on the Bayou

Boy Scout Eagle Project Provides Reusable Garbage Bags

Aug. 29, 2016

Updated

Houston Boy Scout Saswat Pati, a member of Sam Houston Area Council Troop 55, has built and installed wooden boxes to distribute reusable mesh bags for collecting trash on Buffalo Bayou and Spring Creek.

The project is part of a statewide project started by the Nueces River Authority called Up2U. Pati, a sophomore at St. John’s School in Houston, planned and executed the garbage bag project on Buffalo Bayou as part of his service requirement for obtaining the rank of Eagle Scout.

The wooden boxes have now been installed at four locations, including two on the 26-mile long Buffalo Bayou Paddling Trail established by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which is the official beneficiary of the service project. The two Buffalo Bayou locations are Briar Bend and Woodway.

Officials with Harris County Precinct 3 refused to allow Pati to install boxes at the four Paddling Trail boat launches in Terry Hershey Park. In fact, county maps of Terry Hershey Park do not show any boat launches in the park.

Terry Hershey Park, named for conservationist and bayou preservationist Terry Hershey, is in Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack’s Precinct 3.

However, in cooperation with the excellent Bayou Land Conservancy, Commissioner Jack Cagle did allow Pati’s garbage bag boxes to be installed at two locations on Spring Creek in Precinct 4. Those  two locations  are Pundt Park and the Jesse H. Jones Park and Nature Center. Precinct 4 also includes Buffalo Bayou as it flows past Memorial Park.

“With these Up2U bags, people will be able to clean up the river while they paddle,” Pati wrote in a letter to Save Buffalo Bayou, which contributed to the project. “Users will make their own impact on the river. By doing this, I hope to increase the awareness of the condition of Houston’s bayous and to equip all people to fix it.”

Installing a handbuilt wooden box for reusable mesh bags to collect trash on Buffalo Bayou. At the Woodway boat launch in Memorial Park, part of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Buffalo Bayou Paddling Trail.  From  to right: Boy Scouts Jonah Pesikoff and Saswat Pati, Assistant Scoutmaster Janice Walden, and Boy Scout Dad Debananda Pati.

Installing a handbuilt wooden box for reusable mesh bags to collect trash on Buffalo Bayou. At the Woodway boat launch in Memorial Park, part of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Buffalo Bayou Paddling Trail. From left to right: Boy Scouts Jonah Pesikoff and Saswat Pati, Assistant Scoutmaster Janice Walden, and Boy Scout Dad Debananda Pati.

 

 

 

Once-a-Boat-Launch at Woodway to Re-Open by Mid-December

Meanwhile Buffalo Bayou Busy Replanting, Beautifying

Sept. 5, 2015

A contractor has been found at last to take down the heavy-duty chain-link construction fencing, put up some railing, spread some gravel and sod, and restore the informational sign in that western part of Memorial Park that was once a popular boat launch and is now referred to by public officials as a drainage outfall.

Native, edible amaranth in the foreground growing on the bank of the Woodway drainage outfall. Smartweeds, snoutbean, and other plants, mostly native but also some invasive, in the background. Photo Aug. 28, 2015

Native, edible amaranth in the foreground planted by Buffalo Bayou on the bank of the Woodway drainage outfall. Smartweeds, snoutbean, and other plants, mostly native but also some invasive, in the background. Native plants like amaranth and smartweed stabilize the soil and help prepare for new forest growth. Non-native Bermuda and St. Augustine grasses planted by contractors. Photo Aug. 28, 2015

Closed to the public for more than two years, including more than a year after the $1.36 million taxpayer-funded solar-irrigated “erosion control” project was completed, the ugly, massively enlarged outfall draining Post Oak Road is still officially a Texas Parks and Wildlife Paddling Trail boat launch. Previously it was also a forested area with a nature trail.

But officials with the Uptown Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ) 16 now seem genuinely eager to do “what we can to get it open to the public,” said John Breeding, administrator, at the Uptown board meeting in a Galleria high-rise last Wednesday, Aug. 26.

The board voted without discussion to award a contract for $219,272.10 to Jerdon Enterprise, LP, which was the sole bidder for the long-delayed project. With “add-ons” the cost could go to $335,615.10. That seems like a lot of public money for taking down some chain-link fencing, putting up some standard railing, laying down some loose gravel, etc. But apparently no one else wanted to do it.

Work on the Outfall Phase II is now scheduled to begin this month and be completed by December 15, 2015.

And if you’re confused about why a TIRZ and not the parks department or the city council would be making these decisions, well, it is confusing. But the TIRZ has control of the money.

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The TIRZ, Parks, and the Texas Constitution

Feb. 27, 2015

Here’s the report from the Feb. 25, 2015, Uptown TIRZ 16 board meeting about when the once-a-boat launch on Buffalo Bayou  in Memorial Park at Woodway might be reopened.

Please note that Texas constitution guarantees the right of the people to access navigable waterways through public land.

The fenced-off Parks and Wildlife Paddling Trail takeout, referred to by the TIRZ as the “Woodway outfall,” is in need of a guardrail above a steep drop-off, parking reserved for the handicapped, and a gate that allows the park area to be closed at night, according to Sarah Newbery, the TIRZ 16 project director for Memorial Park.

The bayou access point on public land west of Loop 610 has been surrounded by a locked, curtained fence and closed to the public without explanation for almost a year since construction and landscaping were completed on the $1.36 million “erosion control” and drainage improvement project. The larger park area, known as the Old Archery Range, has been closed without explanation for nearly a decade.

The Houston Parks and Recreation Department is reviewing plans for the guardrail, parking, and permanent access gate for the former boat launch, Newbery told the board members meeting on the seventeenth floor of 1980 Post Oak in the Galleria. The TIRZ expects to send the plans out to bids in April and to finish construction by August, Newbery reported.

There will be a sign on the site by next week explaining all this to the public, said Newbery.

But why should the public not have access to the bayou through the park now, since there appears to be no legal or even safety reason why this part of the park should not be open in the meantime? The parks department could erect a temporary guardrail above any drop-off it deems dangerous, as it has done in Buffalo Bayou Park. There’s already a gate and a parking lot.

Read the rest of this story.