Harris County Precinct 3 Environmental Forum
Register and Participate Aug. 20
Aug. 16, 2020
Local environmental groups are sponsoring an online forum August 20 with the Democrat and Republican candidates vying to take the place of retiring Harris County Precinct 3 Commissioner Steve Radack, a Republican who has represented the west Houston area since 1989.
The forum takes place from 7 to 8:15 p.m. Advance registration is required to participate. Register here. The general election is Nov. 3.
Precinct 3 includes Buffalo Bayou west of Loop 610 and many tributaries, as well as other major streams like Cypress and Little Cypress creeks, part of Spring Creek and Brays Bayou, the federal flood-control reservoirs, Addicks and Barker; and much of the Katy Prairie. It also includes parts of Memorial, Spring Branch, Bellaire, West University, and more.
The west-northwest area of the county, once farm and ranch land, has been under heavy development pressure for many years, with resulting controversies over requirements for stormwater detention and preservation of the native prairie. Streams in the county generally flow from west to east.
Nature-based approaches to reducing flood risk—prairie grasses and wetlands, trees, parks, ponds, and gardens—slow rain runoff and absorb (and cleanse) stormwater before it even enters and overwhelms our natural (green) and built (gray) drainage systems. Green flood management is the most practical, beneficial, and cost-effective method of reducing flood risk.
The candidates are Democrat Michael Moore, former chief of staff under Houston Mayor Bill White, and Republican Tom Ramsey, a four-term mayor of Spring Valley Village in west Houston, a civil engineer and until 2015, senior vice-president of Klotz and Associates, now RPS Group, a major contractor with Harris County and the Harris County Flood Control District.
Harris County Commissioners Court is the governing body of the flood control district, and individual commissioners have specific oversight over the activities of the district in their precincts.
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Review: Memorial Park’s Eastern Glades
Good, Better, and Some Ugly
August 15, 2020
The best part about Memorial Park’s new Eastern Glades is the boardwalk through the woods.
Visitors to the popular park on Buffalo Bayou in the middle of Houston can now easily wander and wonder at our native woods and wetlands, complete with dead trees or snags, a vital part of the forest ecology. (Perhaps some signage will be coming along to explain the snags and wetlands to city slickers.)
There are also vast expanses of thick green exotic Zoysia grass for picnicking or just lying around, a Live Oak Court for events, and some lovely pavilions and picnic areas for outdoor grilling and dining, though the pavilions are currently closed due to the Covid.
The 100-acre Glades, on the east side of the park north of Memorial Drive, opened at the end of July. The $35 million project, including $10 million in public funds, features a 5.5-acre artificial lake for detention and water re-use, 2.5 miles of new trails, and environment-friendly dark sky lighting. It’s the first phase of a long-term renovation of the 1,464-acre park, about 40 percent of which is the 600-acre plus golf course (until 1995 the course occupied only 260 acres), recently redone with $13.5 million in private funds to support the PGA Tour’s Houston Open. Sadly, this redoing involved the removal of large numbers of trees so that crowds of spectators can have a better view of the professional golfers during tournaments.
More Green, Less Gray, Some Bad and Very Ugly
The Eastern Glades is part of the long-term Master Plan for the once heavily forested park. Next comes the controversial Land Bridge, which will cover Memorial Drive and connect the north and south sides of the park. This too involves the removal of a great many more trees, although the current design looks greener and less industrial than previous drawings.
Although many trees were removed for the Eastern Glades and a thick carpet of exotic grass laid down, as built the area also seems somewhat gentler, greener, wetter, and wilder than the original plans, allowing at least for a less manicured, more natural experience of the remaining woods. We, and many others, are thankful for that, as Memorial Park was always meant to remain in as natural a state as possible. Let’s hope this aesthetic influences treatment of the rest of the park.
And maybe those bright purple irrigation lines snaking through the woods near the boardwalk are only temporary.
Big Depressing Mistake
The design of the formal Oval Promenade of the Eastern Glades is loosely based on the 1920’s Hare and Hare plan (p. 21) for a formal entry into the park at Blossom Street. From 1917-19 the land which became the park in 1924 was part of Camp Logan, a World War I military training facility and hospital that at the time extended past what is now Westcott Street. See note below. (Ed. Note: An earlier version of this post incorrectly said the original entrance to Camp Logan was at Blossom Street. The camp entrance was at what is now Washington Avenue and Arnot.)
Alas, the massive, newly built stone entrance into the park at Blossom Street is preposterously ugly, jarringly out of character in material, color, texture, style, and scale with the surrounding natural scenery and the airy, restrained architecture of the cabin-like pavilions. Built of depressing gray and blindingly bright hot white, beige-y Central Texas limestone or shellstone, the design intentionally evokes the 1920s or 30s. Why? Does it have to look dated? Can we not move forward?
Approved: New Community Flood Resilience Task Force
Equity, Green Infrastructure, and Controversy
August 12, 2020
Harris County Commissioners have approved a new Community Flood Resilience Task Force.
The new task force, which passed Tuesday, Aug. 11, by a vote of 3-2, replaces the Flood Control Task Force established as a citizens’ advisory group nearly fifty years ago in response to environmental concerns about flood control district practices. Ultimately dominated by developer and engineering interests, that task force lost its purpose.
The new task force, though met with strong disapproval and reservations even from supporters, is nevertheless a laudable effort to provide oversight to the district. It is apparently an initiative of County Judge Lina Hidalgo, who with some exasperation urged participants to “keep trying to make it successful.”
Her staff had done a “lot of research” and looked at best practices of similar task forces around the country, she said at the meeting. Among other things, having a representative from each of the 22 watersheds, as some had demanded, would be too large, she said.
With Precinct 4 Commissioner Jack Cagle and outgoing Precinct 3 Commissioner Steve Radack voting nay, the approval came near the end of another marathon virtual meeting, though at 6 hours 42 minutes, the meeting was only half as long as prior meetings. Discussion and public comments begin around 5:16:40 on the video.
The approved bylaws add the word “Flood” to the name of the Resilience Task Force, include a conflict of interest provision, open meetings to the public, and move the task force out of the county engineering department to a temporary home in Hidalgo’s office.
Iris Gonzalez, director of the Coalition for Equity, Environment, and Resilience (CEER), called the bylaws “a step backwards.” She said they “fail to truly implement the Harris Thrives resolution” which the coalition had helped to pass in August 2019.
That resolution calls for the flood control district to, among other things, “bolster community engagement related to flood control by revamping the roles and responsibilities of the Harris County Flood Control District Task Force and ensuring that a geographically diverse range of community members is represented.”
Evelyn Merz of the Houston Sierra Club objected that as constituted there was still “no one really there with a background in green infrastructure, or green space, particularly in the natural sciences.”
Bob Rehak of Reduce Flooding Now, a Humble-Kingwood area group, urged the commissioners to “kill the proposal.” He said the task force “goes against the will of the voters who voted in the bond program.”
Harris County voters in 2018 approved the issuance for $2.5 billion in bonds to fund flood risk reduction projects.
Precinct commissioners will now proceed with developing nominations in order to begin the task force work in the fall, according to Hidalgo’s office.
At the end of the commissioners court meeting, one of the last public speakers demanded a Lamborghini, which he said the county owed him.
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Update: County Resilience Task Force. Will Same Problems Prevail?
Commissioners to Vote Tuesday
August 9, 2020
Update August 10: The Office of County Judge Lina Hidalgo today released the final proposed bylaws for the Community Resilience Task Force, now the Community Flood Resilience Task Force. Read them here.
Note: Harris County Commissioners Court will again discuss and possibly vote on the proposed bylaws for the new Community Resilience Task Force at its virtual meeting Tuesday, Aug. 11
Recently we told you about how the useless Harris County Flood Control Task Force was being transformed into a new Community Resilience Task Force.
On very short notice, the public was asked to participate in online workshops, send in comments by July 30, and speak at the July 28 Harris County Commissioners Court meeting, which turned out to be a marathon 12 hour 22 minute meeting. (You can watch the meeting here. Discussion of the resilience task force starts around 7:35:00.)
The original task force was established in 1973 in response to a successful, years-long campaign to preserve Buffalo Bayou and prevent it from being stripped, straightened, and smothered in concrete. The 1972 bylaws approved by commissioners court to establish that task force cites “conserving and wisely using the God-given resources we have for the present and future enjoyment of our citizens” as a primary reason for the task force. “God-given resources” meant nature.
Social Equity and Green Infrastructure
In the intervening years, rather than just “enjoyment,” we have come to better understand the superior role of nature in protecting us from flooding, among other important benefits. But for some reason, the proposed new bylaws, in referring to the original task force, overlook this environmental concern as the driving force behind creation of the task force. And although the commissioners in 2019 instructed the district to emphasize nature-based solutions in “public and private projects” (see below), the proposed bylaws don’t mention this either.
The very broad overall purpose of the new task force is “to act as an advisory board to Commissioners Court on matters related to planning, projects, and other efforts concerning infrastructure resilience in Harris County that includes a wide range of stakeholders reflecting a diversity of experience and geographic, socioeconomic, and demographic attributes.”
A major component of this is “the equitable and effective expenditure of flood mitigation and other resilience funds.”
Background of the New Task Force
In August of 2019, commissioners court passed the Harris Thrives resolution, which, among other things, instructed the Harris County Flood Control District to “adopt a framework that ensures a process for the equitable expenditure of Bond Program funds.” In 2018 county voters had approved the issuance of $2.5 billion in bonds to fund flood reduction projects.
The 2019 court resolution also called for the district to “bolster community engagement related to flood control by revamping the roles and responsibilities of the Harris County Flood Control District Task Force and ensuring that a geographically diverse range of community members is represented …”
It also instructed the district to “emphasize an approach that respects, reclaims, and restores floodplains; preserves undeveloped prairies and forests that detain stormwater; and encourages the use of nature-based solutions, natural infrastructure, and cutting-edge technological methods where possible in public and private projects …”
The resolution resulted in the Harris Thrives initiative to expedite more equitable and effective projects and funding for flood control, housing, and emergency preparedness.
Opinion: More concrete ditches and paved-over prairies? Houston must pivot to nature-based flood mitigation
By Amanda Fuller and Jordan Macha, Houston Chronicle
August 6, 2020
SBB editorial note: On July 15 Amanda Fuller gave a presentation on “Incorporating Nature into Houston-Area Flood Mitigation” to the Houston Galveston Area Council’s Regional Flood Management Committee. You can watch the presentation here.
With damage already felt from Hurricane Hanna on the middle and lower Texas coast, and the potential for a devastating hurricane season upon us, the fear of a repeat Hurricane Harvey is top of mind for Houston-area residents and local elected leaders alike. However, many are unaware that leaders in the region have an unprecedented opportunity to set Houston and Harris County on a more resilient and equitable path when it comes to mitigating the impact of future flooding events. With long-standing conventional projects waiting in the wings, there is growing concern that the window for innovation is closing.
After Harvey, many scientific and technical expert groups were formed, reports commissioned, and the public was convened — all in search of solutions. A common theme emerged from all of these efforts: we can’t keep approaching flood mitigation in the same ways and expect a different result — the powerful role of the area’s natural systems, plus a focus on the equitable distribution of funds, must be part of the answer. Continued development in floodplains and reliance on outdated hard infrastructure, such as reservoirs and drainage channels alone, coupled with the paving over of the Katy Prairie, have proven to be a recipe for disaster as the impacts of climate change intensify in the region, especially in communities that have been underinvested in over time.
The good news is that billions of dollars for mitigation activities are pouring into the state by way of $4.3 billion from HUD’s Community Development Block Grant Mitigation Fund (CDBG-MIT), administered by the Texas General Land Office, which is taking applications until Oct. 28. That’s in addition to the opportunity to compete for hundreds of millions of dollars from FEMA’s new Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program (BRIC), which will begin accepting grant applications this fall.
Read the rest of this editorial in the Houston Chronicle.
Fuller is director of the National Wildlife Federation’s Texas Coast and Water Program. Macha is the executive director of Bayou City Waterkeeper.
Changing the Houston Parks Board: How to Apply
Delays, Backlash Against Buffalo Bayou Bank Destruction
July 27, 2020
(Update July 29, 2020: The “How to Apply” link below expires and shows a “Page Removed” message. To reach the application page, go to Boards and Commissions and click on the Apply button.)
We spoke recently with the director of boards and commissions for Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner. We asked her about the Houston Parks Board, the process for becoming a board member, when the board meets, and other issues. Alas, she seemed just as confused as most other people.
We had proposed some potential candidates for the board, a public local government corporation (LGC) that is required to have open meetings. And we wanted to tell the Houston public how they, too, could nominate themselves or others to serve on the board. Four of the 20 positions have expired terms.
This was all in response to a damaging project the board has undertaken—without any public input—on Buffalo Bayou. Except that it wasn’t the public board, it was a private foundation acting as the board, without any accountability. And what they have done to the north bank of Buffalo Bayou above Shepherd Bridge is cut down mature trees, scrape up native vegetation, bulldoze the bank, and encounter some heavy resistance in their attempts to drive sheet pile into the bank. Progress has been slow, with weeks of no visible activity other than sediment leaking into the bayou. The contractor is NBG Constructors.
Trees and vegetation hold the bank together, cleanse and absorb runoff and flowing water, provide shade and habitat, among many other benefits. Even the Harris County Flood Control District recommends against hardened banks, which can increase flooding and erosion up and down stream. (p. 21) The private Houston Parks Board foundation, using both private and public funds, has provided much needed hike-and-bike paths for many Houstonians as part of its Bayou Greenways initiative. But most of these 10-foot wide concrete sidewalks have been placed on channelized or altered, largely shadeless streams. This is the parks board’s first project on Buffalo Bayou.
That Lack of Transparency
We had long been concerned about the lack of transparency from the Houston Parks Board, and this project forced the issue.
Maria Montes, director of boards and commissions for the last two years, said that she would be meeting with the mayor in early August to discuss whose term has expired and potential candidates for the parks board. She said there were basically three ways to become a candidate for the public Houston Parks Board: a recommendation from a city council member, making an application online, and by recommendation from a current parks board member.
When we mentioned that all twenty members of the board were also board members of the private parks board foundation, she said that only a couple of people on the public board were on the board of the private foundation.
However, a comparison of the current roster of the public board with the board of the private foundation shows that everyone on the public board serves on the private board. Most major cities have public park boards or commissions with members, naturalists and community activists, for example, who are different from the board members of the private supporting foundation.
We asked Montes how often the public board meets and how to find out about meetings. She said that notices of board meetings are posted on the board’s website. But the public board does not have a website. The website of the Houston Parks Board belongs to the private foundation, which is the public face of the parks board. There are no announcements about meetings on the website. The foundation does not hold public meetings.
How to Apply
To apply to be a member of the public Houston Parks Board LGC, go to the City of Houston Boards and Commissions page and click on “Apply.”
To learn more about the private Houston Parks Board foundation and its relationship to the City of Houston, register here for Parks Board 101, a free virtual “lunch and learn” offered by the foundation’s Rising Leaders group on Thursday, July 30, from noon to 1 p.m.
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Citizens Flood Control Task to Become Community Resilience Task Force
July 22, 2020
From the mid Sixties to the early Seventies, a group of well-to-do and influential Houstonians fought to prevent Buffalo Bayou from being stripped, straightened, and covered in concrete like White Oak and Brays bayous.
In the wake of that success, in 1973 Harris County Commissioners’ Court created a Citizens Advisory Task Force to make sure that future flood protection projects incorporate environmental concerns.
In the intervening years that goal has become even more important as modern practice recognizes that nature-based methods of reducing flood risk are more effective, more beneficial, more flexible, longer lasting, and less costly. (See p. 27, also here and here and here and here, for starters.)
Yet, instead of becoming more vital, our citizens flood control task force somehow became pointless and irrelevant, and the Flood Control District continued to strip, dredge, and armor streams all over the county—even as every engineering intervention in our streams, particularly Brays and White Oak bayous, has continued to require constant maintenance and repairs. Buffalo Bayou, where the Corps of Engineers in the 1950s stripped and straightened upstream of Beltway 8 and downstream of Shepherd Bridge, also continues to require costly repairs.
A Community Resilience Task Force And An Opportunity To Comment
Now Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo has proposed a Community Resilience Task Force to replace the Flood Control Advisory Task Force. The purpose is “to act as an advisory board to Commissioners Court on matters related to planning, projects, and other efforts concerning infrastructure resilience in Harris County that includes a wide range of stakeholders reflecting a diversity of experience and geographic, socioeconomic, and demographic attributes.”
From now until July 30 Hidalgo is inviting the public to comment on the proposed bylaws for the task force either by email, through a virtual focus group meeting, or by speaking at the July 28 Harris County Commissioners’ Court meeting.
Here are links to the proposed bylaws.
The first of two focus group meetings takes place Thursday, July 23 at 3 p.m. Here is how to register for that Zoom meeting as well as another that takes place July 30 at 10 a.m.
Make Up of the Task Force
The task force is to meet at least six times a year and have 17 members who “represent the geographic, racial, gender, age, and ethnic diversity of Harris County.” Five of the members are to be appointed by commissioners’ court, who in turn appoint the remaining 12 members.
Of those twelve, there must be one each from the following categories:
1.Housing/Land Use
2. Health
3. Engineering/Construction
4.Urban Design/Planning
5.Environment
6.Community Leadership
7.Social Justice
8.Other Regional Infrastructure
The draft of the bylaws also proposes, among other things, that:
Appointed members must be residents of Harris County, have a demonstrated interest in serving the community, and meet one or more of the following qualifications:
•Represent one or more larger Harris County communities impacted by flood and infrastructure disruptions and resilience efforts
•Demonstrate knowledge of or interest in equitable and sustainable infrastructure resilience or flood mitigation
•Demonstrate knowledge of or interest in the socioeconomic and demographic factors that affect the resilience of communities
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Plastic Free July
July 19, 2020
Houston’s Citizens’ Environmental Coalition is recognizing Plastic Free July with several free fun and educational events. These include an online showing of the film The Story of Plastic, available for viewing July 21 through July 23, followed by online panel discussions July 23 at 12 and 6 p.m.
In addition there’s an online Trivia Night July 29 during which you can test your knowledge of plastic. Starts at 6:30 p.m. Prizes from the Houston Chapter of the American Association of Zookeepers! Wonder what those prizes could be? Find out!
Find out more and register here.
Going Round the Bend in Summer
July 19, 2020
We had planned to meet for an early morning float down Buffalo Bayou. This meant rising with the sun. And since we needed our summer photo of that Bend in the River, it seemed a good idea to head out to the woods first.
Every season since the summer of 2014 we’ve been documenting the same bend in the bayou from a high bank in the woods of Memorial Park. Of course, the bank changes, the woods change. The path of the bayou, however, remains remarkably stable.
You can see the entire series here. But our summer 2020 photo had been delayed because our great photographer Jim Olive was still on lockdown in California by order of his beloved. Texas in the time of Covid was too dangerous, even though it was way hotter there in the desert, with an actual high of 121 later in the day. (Not a typo.)
The woods were not exactly cool. Only slightly steamy at 7 in the morning. The temperature was already over 80 degrees. With the humidity it was going to feel like 110. However, it’s always cooler on the water.
It was surprising to hear so many human voices in the woods early in the morning, despite the fact that the Memorial Park Conservancy claimed that the unofficial trails were closed. People were talking to each other as they jogged and hiked along the narrow footpaths through the tall trees and over and around the ravines.
The banks at the water’s edge were heavily lined with giant ragweed, a native that helps protect against erosion. The water had only recently receded after ten days of flow well over 2,000 cubic feet per second (cfs). (Normal or base flow is about 150 cfs.) The Corps of Engineers had been releasing the stormwater pent up in the federal flood control reservoirs behind Barker and Addicks dams far upstream in west Houston. There had been some heavy rain in the western part of the county – over eight inches in 24 hours — above the dams near the end of June.
Black Water
During the final days of emptying the reservoirs, the water flowing down the bayou was a dark gumbo color, almost black, and there was some concern about that. We were unable to get an explanation from the Corps, but our geologists theorized that this was likely decomposed organic matter from the bottom of the reservoir pools.
The Float
We put in at the public boat launch in Memorial Park at Woodway just west of Loop 610. We were all wearing masks, slipping and sliding in the mud. Actually the boat launch, once part of a popular nature trail through the woods, is a giant concrete stormwater outfall draining Post Oak Road. Badly designed by global engineering giant AECOM, the faux-stone structure shoots stormwater directly across the stream, a violation of Flood Control District and Corps policies, blocking the flow, creating turbulence, clogging with sediment, etc. Unfortunately, it seems that the majority of the storm pipes emptying into the bayou, old and new, are improperly installed.
We were five people in three kayaks and a wooden canoe, including Bruce Bodson, Save Buffalo Bayou board member and founder of Lower Brazos River Watch; Rachel Powers, executive director of the Citizens Environmental Coalition, and musician and composer Paul English, an experienced white-water paddler on his first float on Buffalo Bayou.
Ask the County Runoff Candidates: Environmental Forum June 24
Democratic Runoff for Harris County Precinct 3 Takes Place July 14
June 20, 2020
Harris County Precinct 3 is of particular interest to residents concerned about flooding and how we deal with it. On Wednesday, June 24, voters will have an opportunity to participate in an online forum with the two candidates running to be the Democrat who will face the Republican in November for the position of Precinct 3 commissioner.
Precinct 3 includes Buffalo Bayou west of Loop 610 and many tributaries, as well as other major streams like Cypress and Little Cypress creeks, part of Spring Creek and Brays Bayou, the federal flood-control reservoirs, Addicks and Barker; and much of the Katy Prairie. It also includes parts of Memorial, Spring Branch, Bellaire, West University, and more.
The west-northwest area of the county, once farm and ranch land, has been under heavy development pressure for many years, with resulting controversies over requirements for stormwater detention and preservation of the native prairie.
Nature-based approaches to reducing flood risk—prairie grasses and wetlands, trees, parks, ponds, and gardens—slow rain runoff and absorb stormwater before it even enters and overwhelms our natural (green) and built (gray) drainage systems. Green flood management is the most practical, beneficial, and cost-effective method of reducing flood risk.
For these reasons, local environmental groups are sponsoring an online forum with the Democratic candidates vying to take the place of retiring Precinct 3 Commissioner Steve Radack, a Republican who has represented Precinct 3 since 1989.
The forum, which takes place online June 24 from 7 to 8 p.m., will focus on environmental issues. Advance registration for this event is required. To sign up go here.
The Candidates
The Democratic candidates are Diana Alexander, an educator, and Michael Moore, former chief of staff under Houston Mayor Bill White. The runoff election is July 14, with early voting starting on Monday, June 29 and running through Friday, July 10.
The winner will face Republican candidate Tom Ramsey in the general election on Nov. 3. Ramsey is a four-term mayor of tiny Spring Valley Village in west Houston, a civil engineer and until 2015, senior vice-president of Klotz and Associates, now RPS Group, a major contractor with Harris County and the Harris County Flood Control District.
Harris County Commissioners Court is the governing body of the flood control district, and individual commissioners have specific oversight over the activities of the district in their precincts.
A follow-up discussion is planned between the Republican candidate Ramsey and the winner of the Democratic runoff election.
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