Woodway Not-a-Boat-Launch Now a Boat Launch Again

Maybe the Best Boat Launch on the Bayou

Jan. 20, 2016

Yes, the boat launch in Memorial Park on Woodway at 610 Loop is finally open, and it’s maybe the best boat launch on Buffalo Bayou in the entire city.

This official Texas Parks and Wildlife Paddling Trail access to the river has been closed for more than three years while the City of Houston Parks Department and the Galleria-area Uptown TIRZ razed the forest and put in a huge drainage outfall for stormwater runoff from Post Oak Road. They used our public parkland, even denying for a time that the boat launch was a boat launch, and according to some legal experts, under state law they probably should have given notice and had a Chapter 26 hearing to change the use of our parkland like that.

But the City rarely holds such legally required hearings when it comes to our public parkland.

Read the rest of this story.

 

The not-quite-finished entrance from the rebuilt parking lot to the boat launch recently reopened in Memorial Park on Buffalo Bayou at Woodway. Photo taken Jan. 20, 2016

The not-quite-finished entrance from the rebuilt parking lot to the boat launch recently reopened in Memorial Park on Buffalo Bayou at Woodway. Photo taken Jan. 19, 2016

What’s Going on With the Memorial Park Demonstration Project?

The permit is still under evaluation.

[SBB Note: The “erosion control” methods to be demonstrated in Memorial Park have already failed in Buffalo Bayou Park and Fonteno Park.]

By Dianna Wray,  Houston Press, Jan. 4, 2016

The Memorial Park Demonstration project has been a point of contention since the plan was first proposed back in 2013. Since then there have been strident public disagreements and arguments over how the bayou should be handled — or if it should be altered at all — but the ultimate decision on whether to approve the project has been in the hands of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. And so far, even though it’s been more than two years, the Corps has yet to actually choose whether to approve a permit that will give Harris County Flood Control the right to alter one of the last natural stretches of Buffalo Bayou running through the city.

At this point, we’re starting to wonder if the Corps is ever going to make a decision at all.

“The permit is still under evaluation. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Galveston District staff is working to finalize a decision in the coming months,” Dwayne Johnson, regulatory project manager for the Galveston District office of the Corps, stated in reply to our inquiries about where things are in the permit process.

Read the rest of this story in the Houston Press.

Cut Fill Map