Houston Chronicle Outlook Editorial: Plan Could Ruin Buffalo Bayou

 

Invasive Erosion Control Plan Could Destroy Buffalo Bayou

Memorial Park plan would reduce unique waterway to a ditch

Reprinted from The Houston Chronicle.

By Olive Hershey and Frank Salzhandler, Houston Chronicle OUTLOOK, May 18, 2014 Section B

A Harris County plan to alter Buffalo Bayou as it runs through our publicly owned Memorial Park would destroy one of the last remaining river forests in Houston, an ecologically important riparian wilderness that cannot be replaced.

The county intends to bulldoze both sides of the bayou – up to 100 feet from the water’s edge in places and including a tributary in the Hogg Bird Sanctuary – stripping wide swathes of native trees, vines and undergrowth from the bayou’s natural sandy banks.

Vital habitat for hundreds of species of birds, animals and water creatures will be lost. The slow-moving bayou’s shady banks will be denuded and replanted as a sun-baked lawn.

Read the rest.

 

This is their plan for Buffalo Bayou.

barebanksfuture

May 7, 2014

Tell the Army Corps of Engineers you oppose the proposal to bulldoze the natural ecosystem of our last urban wilderness. You have only until June 30 to tell the government it’s better to restore the native habitat than to destroy it.

Restore. Don’t destroy.

A riparian forest cannot be replaced.

Join us to learn more at a public meeting of concerned citizens on May 22 at St. Stephen’s Community Hall, 1805 W. Alabama, beginning at 6:30 p.m.

 

Images of Buffalo Bayou Now.

 

And this is what they want Buffalo Bayou to look like when they are done scraping it bare, stripping the native habitat, and planting it with grass.

A photo of Cypress Creek after "restoration" by the Harris County Flood Control District.

A photo of Cypress Creek after “restoration” by the Harris County Flood Control District.

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