Bayou Destruction Project Still Threatens

Private Park Board Leads Promotion of Unpopular Engineering Scheme

Army Corps Lawyers Reviewing Environmental Assessment

March 27, 2017

The private organization running Memorial Park appears to be taking the lead in promoting a questionable and unpopular project to destroy a historic nature area belonging to the public, one of the last natural stretches of Buffalo Bayou in Houston.

The private board of the Memorial Park Conservancy has hired as the park’s conservation manager Carolyn White, a former long-time employee of the Harris County Flood Control District, which is sponsoring the controversial bayou project. Last month White, representing the Conservancy, gave a lengthy presentation promoting the project at a Houston conference on urban streams.

The 1.25-mile project would raze the trees, vegetation, and ancient high bluffs, dredge, fill a lovely meander, and dig a shorter channel for the 18,000-year-old bayou flowing past Memorial Park and the Hogg Bird Sanctuary. This forested section is the largest stretch of a bayou running through the center of the city that is both accessible to the public and never channelized, a remarkable natural asset for Houston.

The flood control district describes the goals of the project as controlling erosion, stabilizing banks, reducing sediment, and improving water quality. The agency has been seeking a permit for the project from the Army Corps of Engineers under the federal Clean Water Act since 2013. Opponents of the controversial plan argue that the project is scientifically unsound and environmentally damaging, will achieve none of the stated goals, and eliminates a much-needed natural refuge in the midst of the city. They had hoped that the project had been dropped.

The Harris County Flood Control District’s plan for Buffalo Bayou flowing past Memorial Park and the Hogg Bird Sanctuary. The River Oaks Country Club golf course is on the south. Orange is fill and yellow is excavate. Not shown is the destruction of forest for heavy equipment access. The Memorial Park Conservancy is promoting the plan, called the Memorial Park Demonstration Project. Image created by the flood control district.

Environmental Assessment Under Review by Corps Attorneys

But apparently the project is still being pushed forward. A representative of the Corps says the agency has conducted an Environmental Assessment of the plan as required under the National Environmental Policy Act. Dwayne Johnson, regulatory project manager for the Corps’ Galveston District, says the Office of Counsel is conducting a legal review of the assessment.

An Environmental Assessment would result in either a Finding of No Significant Impact or a requirement that the flood control district conduct a full and costly Environmental Impact Statement. Johnson could not say when or if an announcement would be made about the decision.

Read the rest of this story.

Spring 2017 on Buffalo Bayou

Never the Same River Twice

March 18, 2017

Out on Buffalo Bayou early this morning, Saturday, March 18, 2017, with photographer Jim Olive. We were looking for our Spring 2017 shot of the same bend of the bayou we have been documenting for the last three years throughout the seasons. Flow was low base flow, about 150 cubic feet per second. Birds singing. Frogs burping. Squirrels quarreling. Warmth wafting off the water. Was foggier than Jim had hoped, and he had to be patient, as always, for just the right shot. We’d been waiting for a clear morning for days.

For the entire series see A Bend in the River under Photos and Films. This scene is in the historic nature area targeted for destruction and “restoration” by the Harris County Flood Control District, the Memorial Park Conservancy, and the Bayou Preservation Association.

An update on that costly, misguided project, which sadly still threatens, is coming up next.

Morning on Buffalo Bayou, March 18, 2017, shot by Jim Olive from a high bank in Memorial Park looking downstream with River Oaks Country Club property on the right.

Engineers Caused the Flood That Led to Creation of Flood Control District

A Fact-Based Response to “Engineers’ View” in the Texas Tribune

March 6, 2017

A few weeks ago the Texas Tribune published an editorial comment written by engineers Michael Bloom and Steve Stagner responding to the excellent investigative work on flooding in the Houston region, “Boomtown, Floodtown,” published by the Tribune and ProPublica on Dec. 7, 2016. See our summary of the report here.

In their TribTalk editorial “Boomtown, Floodtown Reconsidered, An Engineer’s View,” Feb. 6, 2017, Bloom and Stagner repeat a couple of erroneous statements commonly used by representatives of the Harris County Flood Control District in support of the district’s shaky position that paving over the prairie, i.e. development, is not contributing to flooding.

According to this point of view, our native tallgrass prairie and its associated wetlands are hardly better than concrete when it comes to slowing and absorbing rainwater. These deep-rooted grassland prairies, with water-absorbing root systems that can reach 12-15 feet into the ground or more, once existed around and upstream of Buffalo Bayou, in Katy, west of Houston, for instance, source of Buffalo Bayou, as well as up and down the coastal plain. Practical people are trying to preserve and restore what remains.

In support of their argument, Bloom and Stagner summon up a point commonly made by members of the local engineering community: that the 1935 flood on Buffalo Bayou that devastated downtown Houston and led to the creation of the Harris County Flood Control District happened even though the Katy Prairie way upstream was then a big natural tallgrass prairie.

This argument is wrong on two points. Read why in this fact-based response by Save Buffalo Bayou to an “Engineers’ View” published as a comment in the Tribune’s TribTalk.

Or continue reading to find out the answers. With links!

Prairie switchgrass with root system. Photo by Sky Lewey