Wasting Money the Old-Fashioned Way

Costly Bayou Repairs Do More Harm Than Good, Won’t Last

Nov. 21, 2016

Updated April 23, 2017 — The Harris County Flood Control District reports that repair costs through March 2017 are $1.25 million. Terry Hershey Park remains closed until construction work is complete.

See also “Commissioner Radack Responds.”

From a distance you could hear the monstrous roar of the heavy equipment in the woods. Following deep, wide tracks smashed into the bare dirt along the bank of Buffalo Bayou, passing large cottonwoods apparently cut to make way for the big equipment, we came across a scene of troubling destruction.

A gigantic articulated 30-ton dump truck with six massive wheels was slowly rolling towards us with a large load of fresh dirt and dripping mud dug up from the bayou bank. Further along a 60-ton excavator on tracks sat on the very edge of the bank, expertly swiveling back and forth, scraping up the dirt bank and dumping it into the truck, scooping up loads of white limestone rock and dropping it in a layer where the excavated bank once was.

We’d seen the eroded bank before the “repairs” began. This damage was far worse.

It didn’t have to be this way.

Read the rest of this story.

Dump truck and excavator at work on the north bank of Buffalo Bayou in Terry Hershey Park on Nov. 3, 2016. Photo by Jim Olive

Dump truck and excavator at work on the north bank of Buffalo Bayou in Terry Hershey Park on Nov. 3, 2016. Photo by Jim Olive

 

Fighting For Our Public Forests on Buffalo Bayou

On the Radio

Forests Work for Us

Oct. 28, 2015

Listen to Susan Chadwick of Save Buffalo Bayou and Landrum Wise of Save Our Forest talk about community campaigns to protect public forest along some twelve miles of Buffalo Bayou in Houston.

They spoke with Pat Greer and H.C. Clark on Eco-Ology on KPFT 90.1 Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2015, about efforts to keep the City of Houston and the Harris County Flood Control District from destroying woodlands on Buffalo Bayou in Memorial Park in the center of Houston and in Terry Hershey Park in far west Houston.

In addition to their great social value and benefit to our health, well-being, and quality of life, the trees and vegetation that grow naturally along the bayou perform vital ecological services and are a key part of the bayou’s living system. Known as riparian zones or buffers, these specially adapted trees and plants cleanse and filter pollutants from the water. They protect the banks from erosion, absorb and slow storm water runoff and provide natural flood detention. They shade us and cool the stream, and provide wildlife habitat.

Legally Required to Conserve Harris County Forests

The Harris County Flood Control District, according to its 1937 charter, is charged by state law with conserving forests in the county. (See page six.) But for decades the district has been razing forests to build storm water detention basins on our bayous, creeks, tributaries, and elsewhere, and to re-engineer channels and banks. Detention basins are used to hold or slow temporarily surface runoff or high flows in a stream during storms.

The flood control district’s project on Buffalo Bayou in Memorial Park, known as the Memorial Park Demonstration Project, would raze some 80 percent of the trees and vegetation along more than 1.25 miles of the bayou and its tributaries in Memorial Park and the Hogg Bird Sanctuary. The Army Corps of Engineers, which enforces the federal Clean Water Act, is currently considering whether to issue a permit for the controversial $6 million project, which is described by flood control as an “erosion control” and “bank stabilization” project. The project violates Best Management Practices for riparian areas. Virtually every federal and state resource agency has policies and regulations protecting riparian zones, which perform essentially the same function as federally-protected wetlands.

Recent Success for Save Our Forest

The City of Houston recently withdrew a project to cut down the majority of trees and understory on some 42 acres of public forest and excavate up to six large detention basins on the south bank of Buffalo Bayou in Terry Hershey Park between Beltway 8 and Wilcrest Drive. The Capital Improvement Project was to have cost the taxpayers between $3.5 and $8.5 million.

However, the flood control district appears to be continuing with its widely-opposed “Charting Buffalo” study that proposes as many as 24 storm water detention basins along some 10.7 miles of both banks of Buffalo Bayou in the forests of Terry Hershey Park between Beltway 8 and Highway 6 at Barker and Addicks dams. On Nov. 12, 2013, despite public opposition, Harris County Commissioners Court approved flood control’s request for $250,000 for a vegetation and topography survey in the park.

The headwaters of Buffalo Bayou are on the Katy Prairie west of Houston, and the 18,000-year-old “mother bayou,” fed by numerous tributaries, flows for some 53 miles east through the city and the ship channel into Galveston Bay. Buffalo Bayou, unlike major bayous like White Oak and Brays, which join Buffalo Bayou just west and east of downtown, has never been covered with concrete, though parts of it have been channelized.

Listen to the radio broadcast.

The banks of Buffalo Bayou in Terry Hershey Park in West Houston. Straightened and channelized by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1940s to speed storm waters, the bayou has since restored itself but remains threatened by public projects to slow storm waters.

The banks of Buffalo Bayou in Terry Hershey Park in West Houston. This 10.7-mile stretch of the bayou downstream from Barker and Addicks dams was straightened and channelized by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1950s to speed storm waters. The bayou in this park has since restored itself but remains threatened by public flood control projects. Photo Oct. 6, 2015 by Susan Chadwick

 

 

 

Film: Letting the River Heal

Learning to Respect A River’s Natural Process

October 18, 2015

“We have to be patient,” says Steve Nelle, Natural Resources Conservation Service, retired.

“Nature’s going to recover that area at her own timetable in her own way. It’s best to accommodate that natural process.”

Watch this moving and informative 14-minute documentary about a river’s natural process and Best Management Practices for protecting against erosion and preserving a river’s important role in cleansing our water, slowing storm water and runoff, and providing wildlife habitat.

All of this applies to Buffalo Bayou as well as our other bayous, creeks, and streams in Harris County. Even a small riparian buffer of native trees and vegetation a few feet wide is important for our waterways and the cleanliness of the water flowing through our neighborhood streams and into our bays and oceans. But on Buffalo Bayou, especially as it flows past Memorial Park, we are fortunate to have room for the river to move. Letting the river be a river is the most current scientific thinking on river management, even in cities. A dynamic river creates the most beneficial and biologically diverse environment.

Let’s work with nature, not against it.

This lovely, short film was made about the Blanco River and the impact of the 2015 Memorial Day flood on Wimberly, Texas. We can all learn from it.

Watch the film.

Steve Nelle, Natural Resources Conservation Service, retired. Still photo from the documentary, "Letting the River Heal."

Steve Nelle, Natural Resources Conservation Service, retired. Still photo from the documentary, “Letting the River Heal.”

Update on Puzzling Project to Bulldoze Wild Buffalo Bayou

Damaging, Expensive, Contradictory Plan Still Threatens

Conflicts Still Apparent, Purpose Still Unclear

No Permit Yet

October 8, 2015

The Harris County Flood Control District has responded to largely critical public comments to the Army Corps of Engineers about Flood Control’s misguided project to destroy one of the last natural stretches of Buffalo Bayou in Houston, a most remarkable asset to have in the middle of a city. The Corps is reviewing the Flood Control District’s responses, says Jayson Hudson, who has been the Corps’ Galveston District project manager for the permit application.

Flood Control must apply for a permit from the Corps of Engineers because the Clean Water Act requires the Corps to ensure that projects on federal waters do not damage the health of our waters. Federal waters are defined as navigable streams (Buffalo Bayou) up to the Ordinary High Water Mark, their tributaries and adjacent wetlands, all of which form the great living veins and arteries of our limited water supply. Some studies argue that all riparian areas , the highly biologically diverse natural gardens and forests along stream banks so vital for clean water, should be considered protected wetlands .

This beautiful meander, a natural detention area, would be filled in and graded, the woods and high cliffs destroyed, and the entire floodplain area obliterated by a permanent road. Aerial photo on Oct. 3, 2015, by Jim Olive

This beautiful meander, a natural storm water detention area, would be filled in and graded, the woods and high cliffs destroyed, and the entire floodplain area obliterated by a permanent road. Aerial photo on Oct. 3, 2015, by Jim Olive

Read the rest of this post.

While We Wait

The Flood Control District’s Failing “Natural Channel Design” Projects

July 11, 2015

Well, the comments are in to the Army Corps of Engineers. The comment period that ended June 5 was not extended. So now we wait to find out what the Corps will do next about a permit for the Harris County Flood Control District’s controversial $6 million Memorial Park Demonstration Project. The flood control district wants to destroy one of the last natural stretches of Buffalo Bayou as it flows past Memorial Park in the middle of the city so that engineers can “build it better,” thus demonstrating exactly the wrong thing to do for erosion control and bank stabilization on the bayou.

It’s the wrong thing to do because the specially adapted trees and plants on the bayou (known as the riparian zone) protect the land from erosion, slow storm water and runoff, filter pollution and bacteria (and trash) from the water, provide shade and habitat, among many other vital functions. Razing the riparian buffer, as this project would do, digging up and running heavy equipment over the banks and bayou bottom are all contrary to Best Management Practices and the policies of virtually every federal and state agency charged with protecting the health of our waters, our wildlife habitat, and our soil.

What Are the Options?

So what are the Corps’ options?

Read the rest of this story to find out and learn about the flood control district’s previous failing “natural channel design” projects.

 

Cottonwood downed on south bank west of Waugh by undercutting of banks in Buffalo Bayou Park "restored" by the Harris County Flood Control District. Several more mature trees have been lost since this photo was taken Jan. 26, 2015, by Jim Olive.

Cottonwood downed on south bank west of Waugh by undercutting of banks in Buffalo Bayou Park “restored” by the Harris County Flood Control District. Several more mature trees have been lost since this photo was taken Jan. 26, 2015, by Jim Olive.

Let’s Work With Nature, Not Against It

What’s the right way to protect Buffalo Bayou?

March 18, 2015 Updated: March 18, 2015 11:20am

Is the traditional vision of local and urban flood control agencies in conflict with federal and state agencies charged with protecting the health of our waterways?

Let me explain how I came to ask myself this question about mission conflict.

I grew up on Buffalo Bayou in Houston, and since early last spring I have been involved with a campaign to stop a flood control project that would destroy and then attempt to rebuild a healthy and relatively untouched riparian forest corridor running through the center of our city. It’s pretty rare to have a stretch of fairly wild river running through the middle of such a large city. The late great conservationist Army Emmott described our Buffalo Bayou as a ribbon of life running through the concrete. And that’s what it is: a living thing, a diverse and dynamic ecosystem that shows us the wondrous process of nature.

We are even more fortunate that in the words of the great river scientist Mathias Kondolf of Berkeley, this enchanting river has “room to move.” Here, in the middle of the city, we have space to “let the river be a river” — to let its banks change and its forest garden grow, as they would naturally. Dr. Kondolf traveled through this reach of the bayou in November, a reach that has never been channelized. The nearly 1.5-mile stretch targeted for destruction flows between the riparian forest and great cliffs of a public park (Memorial Park) and the forested terraces and high banks of a private golf course.

Read the rest of this article in the Houston Chronicle.

Note: This opinion piece is adapted from a presentation delivered February 12, 2015, at Texas’ first Urban Riparian Symposium, sponsored by the Texas Water Resources Institute, the Texas Riparian Association, and the City of Austin.

Looking over Buffalo Bayou from Memorial Park towards the River Oaks Country Club. This area is targeted for destruction by the $6 million Memorial Park Demonstration Project. Photo by Jim Olive.

Looking over Buffalo Bayou from Memorial Park towards the River Oaks Country Club. This area is targeted for destruction by the $6 million Memorial Park Demonstration Project. Photo by Jim Olive.

Operation Save Buffalo Bayou: Banners, Signs Erected During Big Regatta Saturday, March 7

March 8, 2015

Defenders of Buffalo Bayou traipsed through clumps of wild chives and violets on the banks of the bayou Saturday, March 7, in order to hang colorful banners from bridges and trees and set out signs informing more than a thousand participants in the annual Buffalo Bayou Regatta about the grave threat to our wild bayou.

Operation Save Buffalo Bayou was a huge success as competitors paddling down the bayou waved and shouted “No bulldozers!” and “Leave it natural!” to members of the Buffalo Bayou defense team sitting on the banks in the project area.

Bayou defenders also handed out informational flyers at the end of the race in Sesquicentennial Park adjacent to the Wortham Center downtown and engaged participants and officials in conversation.

The regatta was organized by the Buffalo Bayou Partnership (BBP), a non-profit organization in charge of developing the $58 million Buffalo Bayou Park between Memorial Drive and Allen Parkway downstream of the project area. The partnership officially supports the $6 million plan to bulldoze one of the last natural stretches of the bayou as it flows past Memorial Park in the middle of Houston.

Sand on the Sidewalks

BBP President Anne Olson wrote a letter of support for the destruction project to the Army Corps of Engineers in June 2014 saying that the plan would “significantly prevent” the bayou from “depositing silt on Buffalo Bayou’s downtown parks and trails.” She also claimed that the project, known as the Memorial Park Demonstration Project, would demonstrate “a prototype that can be employed by bayou property owners who currently remedy their property erosion by all different types of inappropriate stabilization methods.”

In fact the amount of silt and sediment contributed by the historic nature area targeted for destruction by the Harris County Flood Control District is minimal. But the project itself would likely greatly increase the sediment flowing downstream as a result of dredging the bayou, removing trees and plants, and breaking up the soil structure of the banks.

Read the rest of this story.

Beautiful banner of a night heron drawn by Houston artist Frank Tolbert hanging over Buffalo Bayou during the annual Regatta.

Beautiful banner of a night heron drawn by Houston artist Frank Tolbert hanging over Buffalo Bayou during the annual Regatta.

Update On the Not-A-Boat Launch In Memorial Park at Woodway

Feb. 9, 2015

Rumors have been flying across the concrete prairie and through the riparian woods of Buffalo Bayou that what was once a popular boat launch in Memorial Park at Woodway will be opened again to the public maybe by March or April.

And while we have determined that there is not actually a definite plan yet for opening the once-a-boat-launch, we can confirm that there may be some plans eventually to possibly appropriate some money to build handrails for safety and handicapped access, a proper parking lot, and some other stuff that city officials claim are required to make the longtime, popular no-longer-a boat-launch safe again for the public.

The Uptown Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ) 16, which in 2013 expanded to include Memorial Park, will consider funding the improvements “required to open the area as a public access point to the bayou,” Sarah Newbery, Memorial Park project director for the TIRZ 16, said in an email. This budget decision will happen at the next board of directors meeting on February 25, 2015, at 3:30 p.m. in Suite 1700, 1980 Post Oak Boulevard, said Newbery.

Why an unelected semi-private entity controls our public park, we don’t know. But the Uptown TIRZ meeting notices and agenda are posted 72 hours prior to the meeting at the Houston City Hall Public Bulletin Board, at the rear entrance of the City Hall Annex, 900 Bagby. So go downtown and park and find the bulletin board and look on it to see what’s on the agenda. There does not seem to be an online notice.

We can tell you that the Uptown TIRZ 16 2015-2019 Capital Improvement Plan includes nothing for the Woodway “drainage/erosion control” project, not even for maintenance, which is a constant problem, since the badly designed (AECOM) outfall collects mud. However, the TIRZ 16 2015 CIP budget includes $9.5 million for “Memorial Park/Buffalo Bayou.”

Read the rest of this update.

The drainage outfall but not a boat launch covered with mud in Memorial Park at Woodway. Photo by Bill Heins on February 16, 2015.

The drainage outfall but not a boat launch covered with mud in Memorial Park at Woodway. Photo by Bill Heins on January 16, 2015.

But It’s Best to Leave the Bayou Alone, Says BPA’s Water Quality Director

Feb. 5, 2015

We lost track of the number of times our jaws dropped listening to Steve Hupp present the Bayou Preservation Association’s argument for destroying one of the last natural stretches of Buffalo Bayou in Houston.

Hupp, who was speaking to the Briar Forest Super Neighborhood council on Jan. 20, is the water quality director for the BPA, which was founded in the 1960s to protect the natural banks of Buffalo Bayou from the bulldozers of the Harris County Flood Control District. Hupp lamented that a representative of Flood Control wasn’t there to help him make his case for bulldozing and dredging some 80 percent of a healthy stretch of our wild, southern bayou for more than a mile in and around our public Memorial Park, including the great cliffs of the Hogg Bird Sanctuary. This $6 million boondoggle, touted as “bank restoration and stabilization,” is called the Memorial Park Demonstration Project (MPDP). Demonstrating exactly the wrong thing to do for erosion control by razing the riparian buffer, the project will destroy the bayou’s ecosystem. According to the BPA, the bayou will be re-engineered to “a more natural state.”

Briar Forest, which is south of Buffalo Bayou between Gessner, Westheimer, and Dairy Ashford, has been fighting its own battle with Flood Control over a plan to destroy a significant amount of forest to create stormwater detention basins.

City Council Member Oliver Pennington was at the meeting. Pennington, who is running for mayor, represents District G, which includes Briar Forest way out there and much closer into town, the south bank of Buffalo Bayou in the “bank restoration” project area. The south bank, which is half of the project, is owned entirely by the River Oaks Country Club, founded in 1924, of which Pennington is a member and which is donating $2 million or one-third of the projected cost of the “stabilization” project. The club is in the process of digging up and rebuilding its golf course, which over the decades has encroached on what was once thick riparian forest, moving closer and closer to the edges of the high banks of the bayou.

Read the rest of this story.

An aerial photo taken in 1953 of Buffalo Bayou and surrounding riparian forest in the project area.

An aerial photo taken in 1953 of Buffalo Bayou and surrounding riparian forest in the project area.

Who’s Cutting the Black Willows on Buffalo Bayou in Memorial Park?

Dec. 21, 2014

We’ll Get to the Bottom of This Meander Mystery

Updated Dec. 24, 2014. Mystery solved! See below.

Revisiting a beautiful meander last week in Memorial Park we came across something strange. This is what we call the middle meander in the area of the Harris County Flood Control District’s project to bulldoze the riparian vegetation, dredge and channelize one of the last natural stretches of Buffalo Bayou in the middle of Houston. You can see photos taken earlier in October of this lovely spot.

This is a flat, marshy area of the north bank, filled with wildlife, mullet jumping and landing on their backs, where the bayou has gradually shifted to the east and has been naturally revegetating the sandy banks with native smartweed, ground cherry, boxelder, black willow, and sycamores.

Here is what it looked like last week.

  • Wildlife tracks in the mud on the middle meander to be destroyed. Photo taken Dec. 15, 2014, by Susan Chadwick.
  • Edible native smartweed on the middle meander to be obliterated by the Harris County Flood Control District. Photo taken Dec. 15, 2014, by Susan Chadwick
  • Sycamore in the foreground, sandy point on the south bank of the middle meander to be filled in by the flood control district. Photo taken Dec. 15, 2014, by Susan Chadwick

 

This area will be totally obliterated by the flood control district’s “erosion control” and “bank stabilization” project, known as the Memorial Park Demonstration Project. The bayou here will be filled in, the magnificent, very old cliffs defaced and leveled, and the bayou rerouted further to the south. Why? Because that’s what the flood control district imagines the bayou will do 200-300 years from now. So we taxpayers are paying $4 million to do all the damage now that the bayou might possibly do in several centuries.

The odd thing was that someone has been cutting down the native black willow saplings that are growing up on the sandy bench in this area, creating a new riparian forest so necessary for controlling erosion, stabilizing the banks, cleansing the water, and providing wildlife habitat. Who would do that and why?

Answer: It’s beavers.

Here’s the evidence.

  • Native black willow sapling chopped, apparently by a beaver, it turns out. Experts have pointed out the tooth marks that a beaver makes. All photos taken Dec. 15, 2014, by Susan Chadwick.
  • Another native black willow cut by a busy beaver. These are the trees that a healthy bayou naturally plants to create a new riparian forest, but beavers need homes too.
  • Another young black willow cut down for a beaver development.
  • The probable track of a beaver, apparently dragging a harvested black willow sapling to the water for home building material. And are those beaver footprints with the long toes?

 

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