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New Aerial Photos of Buffalo Bayou!

Float In The Air Down Buffalo Bayou With Houston Photographer Jim Olive

October 17, 2015

Travel down the remarkable historic stretch of our 18,000-year-old bayou proposed for “restoration” by the Harris County Flood Control District and the City of Houston. The $6 million project, violating virtually every Best Management Practice for riparian areas, would pointlessly destroy and rebuild over 1.25 miles of a naturally-functioning bayou as it flows past Memorial Park and the Hogg Bird Sanctuary on the north and the River Oaks Country Club on the south.

Photos taken on October 2, 2015. Thank you, Jim Olive!

This massive new drainage outfall on Buffalo Bayou at Woodway, soon to be once-again a public boat launch, is not in the project area targeted for "restoration" by the proposed $6 million Harris County Flood Control project. But this formerly forested area in Memorial Park, destroyed for a $1.3 million City "erosion control" project, is for many the beginning of a float trip through the threatened historic natural area in the park. Photo by Jim Olive, Oct. 2, 2015
The same drainage outfall/boat launch in Memorial Park at Woodway one year later after an "accidental" mowing of riparian plants by a Memorial Park maintenance crew and now, apparently, bulldozing of what remained for some reason. Photo by Jim Olive on Sept. 29, 2016
Concrete riprap placed by the River Oaks Country Club in August 2015 on a terrace below the high bank and adjacent to a wetland at the beginning of the proposed $6 million Harris County Flood Control project. The young box elder and other vegetation naturally planted there by the bayou were destroyed by soil-damaging heavy equipment. The mowed golf course extending to the edge of the high bank and the concrete path for motorized golf carts likely contributed to erosion of the high bank. Memorial Park on the left. Photo by Jim Olive, Oct. 2, 2015
Another view of the environmentally-damaging riprap recently placed by the River Oaks Country Club on the south bank at the upstream limit of the proposed project area. Sandy beach of Memorial Park on the left. Photo by Jim Olive, Oct. 2, 2015
Aerial view of a lovely meander in Memorial Park showing very old high bluffs on the right. The meander would be filled and the high bluffs leveled by the proposed Memorial Park Demonstration Project. Jim Olive photo, Oct. 2, 2015
Another view of the meander with its charming sandy beaches and magnificent high cliffs as we move downstream through this remarkable historic nature area in the middle of Houston targeted for destruction. River Oaks Country Club property on the left. Photo by Jim Olive on Oct. 2, 2015
The same meander nearly a year later on Sept. 29, 2016. Photo by Jim Olive
Brush on the banks taken down by the Memorial Day 2015 Flood is collecting sediment and naturally rebuilding the banks. The project proposed by Flood Control mimics this natural bank stabilizing process but would pointlessly spend millions of public dollars to destroy the superior work of nature and replace it with costly engineering likely to fail. Memorial Park on the left, River Oaks Country Club on the right. Jim Olive photo Oct. 2, 2015.
Sandy forested banks of the River Oaks Country Club on the right. Sandy beach on the left owned by the Harris County Flood Control District, though the property behind is privately owned. Photo by Jim Olive Oct. 2, 2015.
Kayakers on Buffalo Bayou in the area targeted for destruction on Sept. 29, 2016. Photo by Jim Olive
Kayakers on Buffalo Bayou on Sept. 29, 2016. Photo by Jim Olive.
Riprap installed by the River Oaks Country Club on the south bank of Buffalo Bayou in August 2015. Photo by Jim Olive on Oct. 2, 2015.
Aerial view of a wetland and the riprap placed on a denuded bank, once forested, by the River Oaks Country Club in August 2015. Sandy beach on the left owned by the people of Houston (as part of the Hogg Bird Sanctuary), with the point owned by Harris County Flood Control . Photo by Jim Olive on Oct. 2, 2015
Aerial view of the same riprap one year later on Sept. 29, 2016, showing additional riprap installed at the downstream end. Photo by Jim Olive
Wider view of the meander showing south bank armored by riprap in 2015 and 2016 and sandy point on north side owned by the Harris County Flood Control District in front of private residences. Photo by Jim Olive on Sept. 29, 2016
Aerial view of the tributary and high banks of the Hogg Bird Sanctuary on the north, a public park, and the River Oaks Country Club golf course on the south near the downstream limit of the area targeted for dredging, grading, and filling by the Harris County Flood Control District. The high bank in the sanctuary slumped during the spring high waters, but the brush lying there is collecting sediment and naturally rebuilding the bank. Photo by Jim Olive on Oct. 2, 2015

October 17, 2015 5 Comments More

The Bad Things That Happen When You Strip Forest from the Banks of Bayous

Aug. 2, 2014

We Have Forgotten The Wisdom of Our Predecessors

The early settlers knew better than to cut down the trees and vegetation from the banks of Buffalo Bayou and other streams.

Erosion control by cutting trees and vegetation and disturbing soil along the banks of Buffalo Bayou as it passes by the Houston Country Club.

Even where they set up sawmills along the bayou in the 1820s and ’30s, the mill owners had the common sense to leave the trees standing along the riverbank to protect the land from erosion, says Janet Wagner, chair of the Harris County Historical Commission.

Before that, says Wagner, the indigenous people who lived and camped along the bayou left the riparian forest intact, understanding its importance for holding the banks in place, cleansing and cooling the waters, slowing storm waters, providing fish and wildlife habitat, and much more.

The Harris County Flood Control District, in a wrongheaded plan promoted by the Bayou Preservation Association and supported by the Memorial Park Conservancy and the City of Houston, is proposing to strip most of the riparian forest buffer from some of the last wild banks of Buffalo Bayou in Houston. Known as the Memorial Park Demonstration Project, the controversial $6 million project is demonstrating to landowners up and down the bayou and elsewhere exactly what they should not do to protect their property. Preservation of riparian zones along waterways is both federal and state policy, but apparently the city and the county have not yet understood that message.

Recently the flood control district announced another misguided “restoration” project to strip trees and vegetation from the banks of a tributary of Greens Bayou.

The costly experience of the Houston Country Club ought to be instructive. The club not too long ago bulldozed a significant amount of trees and vegetation from the banks of Buffalo Bayou as it passes by the club golf course in Tanglewood. This was a project designed by the engineering firm AECOM, which also designed the failing “erosion control” project in the former Archery Range in Memorial Park at Woodway. A representative of AECOM sits on the board of the Bayou Preservation Association.

Watch this slide show of the disastrous results of razing riparian forest at the Houston Country Club. The photographs were taken on June 27, 2014, and annotated by geophysicist Richard Hyde, a longtime supporter of Buffalo Bayou.

Here is another shocking slide show of photographs taken almost three months earlier on April 2, 2014, of the same, formerly forested area of the Houston Country Club. (See comparison aerial photos below.) The photos were provided by Evelyn Merz, conservation chair of the Houston Regional Group of the Sierra Club. Note in the photos shown above how much more damage had been done three months later.

The ugly result of stripping riparian vegetation for "erosion control" at the Houston Country Club.

The flood control district proposes to bulldoze, dredge, and trample with heavy equipment nearly 1.5 miles of Buffalo Bayou and its banks as it flows between Memorial Park and the Hogg Bird Sanctuary on the north and the River Oaks Country Club on the south. The taxpayers of Houston and Harris County are paying $4 million and the country club $2 million for this project.

The Army Corps of Engineers is currently considering whether to issue a permit for the project to the flood control district.

Buffalo Bayou before it was stripped of forest by the Houston Country Club.

Buffalo Bayou after forest was razed along parts of the Houston Country Club golf course.

August 2, 2014 3 Comments More

Sierra Club to Present Findings on County Claims of Improving Ecology of Buffalo Bayou

June 12, 2014

Is there ecological benefit to Harris County’s plan to bulldoze the wild banks of Buffalo Bayou in and around Memorial Park? Will our beautiful southern bayou be improved? Common sense says no, but the Harris County Flood Control District says yes. What is the truth?

The flood control district in its permit application (warning: big pdf file but see page 451) to the Army Corps of Engineers claims that there is “ecological lift” from their project to “restore” the bayou by stripping riparian forest and vegetation from both banks and parts of the Hogg Bird Sanctuary and digging up, filling in, and reconfiguring our 18,000-year-old bayou, one of the few natural reaches of the river remaining in the city.

The Houston Sierra Club arranged for a hydrologist and a biologist to analyze the county’s evidence outlined in the permit application that Buffalo Bayou will be improved through “ecological lift.”

On Wednesday, June 18, the public is invited by the Houston Sierra Club to a presentation on the results of its investigation into these amazing claims by the Harris County Flood Control District. There will be a visual exhibit of the project area showing the value of Buffalo Bayou as a natural resource.

The presentation will be at the United Way Community Resource Center, 50 Waugh Drive, Houston 77007.

Refreshments will be served at 6:30 p.m. The program begins at 7 p.m.

Buffalo Bayou at sunrise as it flows past Memorial Park on the left and River Oaks Country Club on the right. Photo by Frank Salzhandler.

Does this look like ecological improvement to you?

June 12, 2014 No Comments More

Save Buffalo Bayou on KPFT Progressive Forum

June 5, 2014

Listen to Evelyn Merz defend Buffalo Bayou from Harris County’s bulldozers with Progressive Forum host Wally James on KPFT. The program aired on 90.1 FM on Thursday, June 5, from 7 to 9 p.m. Merz is conservation chair of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. Her segment starts around the 50 minute mark.

Listen to the show.