Room for the River: What the River Scientist Had to Say

Nov. 25, 2014

Updated Saturday, Nov. 29, 2014, with a link to the video of the lecture by Mathias Kondolf.

More than 100 people gathered last Friday evening to hear Mathias Kondolf speak about rivers, river restoration, and the state of Buffalo Bayou at the Assembly Hall of St. Theresa Memorial Park Catholic Church.

Kondolf is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, a world-renowned river scientist, and a leading critic of the destructive and often-failing methods proposed for a $6 million “erosion control” and “bank stabilization” project on Buffalo Bayou. He spoke for nearly two hours to a crowd that included people on all sides of a controversial project to bulldoze the riparian forest and dredge and channelize nearly 1.5 miles of one of the last natural stretches of the bayou in the city.

The project, known as the Memorial Park Demonstration Project, was conceived by the Bayou Preservation Association, which actively promotes the plan. The Army Corps of Engineers is considering whether to issue a permit to the Harris County Flood Control District for the project.

Riparian forest or buffer, also called a riparian zone, consists of specially adapted trees and plants along the edge of a waterway. Among the many important functions of riparian zones are protecting the land from erosion, filtering pollution, cleansing the water, slowing flood water, and providing wildlife and human habitat.

Kondolf had spent hours inspecting the bayou in the rain earlier in the day. The project area is bounded entirely on the south by the River Oaks Country Club golf course, which is currently being renovated. The north bank of the project is our public Memorial Park, along with the Hogg Bird Sanctuary and some private property. Taxpayers are contributing $4 million to this project.

Read the rest.

Professor Mathias Kondolf on Buffalo Bayou, Friday, Nov. 21, 2014. Photo by Jim Olive.

Professor Mathias Kondolf on Buffalo Bayou, Friday, Nov. 21, 2014. Photo by Jim Olive.

Update on Our Campaign to Save the Last Natural Stretch of Buffalo Bayou in Houston

Oct. 5, 2014

Where are we now and what should you do?

The Harris County Flood Control District has applied for a permit to bulldoze most of the riparian forest and vegetation along both banks of more a mile of the last remaining stretch of natural Buffalo Bayou in the city. This is our bayou as it passes by Memorial Park. Also targeted are the tributary and high bluffs of the Hogg Bird Sanctuary, as well as other ancient cliffs and prehistoric sandstone used in the past as water crossings by buffalo and people. The project would excavate, fill, grade, and artificially rebuild the banks; dredge, deepen, and reroute the bayou channel, damming tributaries. Hundreds of trees will be cut down, many of them riparian species too small or too young to be counted by the district’s inappropriate tree survey. The shading tree canopy will be removed (project proponents claim there is no tree canopy!); the water temperature increased. The soil, packed with protective, binding roots small and large, will be dug up, tossed around, and compacted by heavy equipment. Wetlands and lovely sandy beaches will be obliterated along with the colonizing and stabilizing plants that have taken root there, a crucial stage of the natural process of building the riparian buffer so important to water quality, flood and erosion control.

All of this and more violates best management practices for riparian zones. It will destroy the bayou’s ecosystem. And this is a project developed and promoted by the Bayou Preservation Association, supported by the Memorial Park Conservancy.

Timelines Are Difficult to Predict — Updated Oct. 30, 2014

The Harris County Flood Control District has responded to the public comments sent to the Army Corps of Engineers during the public comment period, which ended June 30. The district has posted its responses on its website, and you can read them here. (Caution: big pdf.)

Read the rest.

The River Oaks Country Club has killed the grass on its golf course, along with vegetation on the high banks, in preparation for redoing the golf course. Photo on Sept. 20, 2014, by Jim Olive.

The River Oaks Country Club, which owns the entire south bank of the bayou project, has killed the grass on its golf course, along with some vegetation on the high banks, in preparation for redoing the golf course. Photo on Sept. 20, 2014, by Jim Olive.

The Memorial Park Master Plan and the Survival of Buffalo Bayou

Sept. 20, 2014

Nobody wanted to mention the strange plan to bulldoze our wild Buffalo Bayou in Memorial Park and they wouldn’t let us put out our flyers at the Memorial Park Conservancy meeting in the El Dorado Ballroom on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2014, to introduce the beginnings of a new master plan for the park. The previous master plan in 2004 recommended that this last remaining stretch of wild bayou be left alone as a valuable educational tool about nature and its dynamic process. The conservancy, a private, non-profit organization charged with protecting and preserving the 1500-acre park, has decided to ignore that recommendation and supports razing the riparian forest, dredging, channelizing, rerouting, and destroying the ecosystem of this stable, functioning reach of the bayou. Because.

Well, few people understand what the purpose of this bizarre project is, and we have talked to some certified geniuses about it. Proponents call it erosion control, flood control, invasive species control, “restoration,” but none of it explains the massive amount of destruction planned or why they are using long-discredited channelizing methods that likely will result in more erosion, more flooding, and the whole artificially reconstructed bayou washing out, along with whatever native vegetation they plant there.

Read the rest.

Topographic map of Buffalo Bayou on the southern edge of Memorial Park, 2013.

Topographic map of Buffalo Bayou on the southern edge of Memorial Park, 2013.

Reminder: Meeting With City Council Members Representing Buffalo Bayou

July 29, 2014

Public Meeting with Council Members Pennington and Cohen

It’s about Shepherd Drive, but go and ask why they support the project to destroy Buffalo Bayou.

Plus The Top Ten Reasons They Give for The Awful Project and The Correct Answers

Don’t forget the public meeting  tonight (Wednesday, July 30, 2014) with City Council Members Oliver Pennington (District G) and Ellen Cohen (District C), who represent the wild banks of Buffalo Bayou to be bulldozed by the misguided project known as the Memorial Park Demonstration Project. Even the natives and the early settlers (including mill owners) knew better than to cut down the riparian forest on Buffalo Bayou, recognizing its importance for naturally controlling erosion of the banks, slowing storm waters, filtering pollution and bacteria, trapping sediment, and providing wildlife habitat.

Otter emerging from its den on a tributary of Buffalo Bayou. Photo courtesy of Dewey Stringer.

Otter emerging from its den on a tributary of Buffalo Bayou. Photo courtesy of Dewey Stringer.

Cohen represents Memorial Park, which belongs to all of us. And Pennington, who is running for mayor, represents the south bank of the project, owned by the River Oaks Country Club, stewards of the riparian forest for which it is named since 1923. Pennington also represents that little-known section of Memorial Park just west of 610, now known as the Bayou Woodlands, formerly the Archery Range. There, just off Woodway, a failing “erosion control” project is spewing mud and silt into the bayou. Previously this was a lovely forested ravine with a nature trail. The TIRZ 16, encompassing the Galleria area, now including Memorial Park, and a special kind of improvement district that gets to keep and spend tax money that would have gone into the city treasury, spent $1,147,934 on this particular drainage boondoggle designed by engineering firm AECOM, which also designed the failing “erosion control” project on the banks of the Houston Country Club.

So go and ask these city council members why they support the destruction of some of the last best, healthiest and most beautiful bayou we have in the city. The project would destroy nearly 1.5 miles of the bayou, including most of the forest on both banks, dredging up and rechanneling our lovely, shady stream, obliterating creeks and prehistoric bluffs too old even to contemplate, killing and driving away wildlife, trampling and removing habitat, and so much more that is wrong. The Army Corps of Engineers is considering whether to issue a permit for the project.

The meeting, held in conjunction with the city Public Works and Engineering Department, is from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at St. Anne’s Catholic Church (St. Basil’s Hall), 2140 Westheimer Road. The purpose is to review a paving and drainage project, set to begin in a few weeks, on Shepherd Drive from Westheimer to Buffalo Bayou. So it’s not exactly about the bayou project. But there will be a question and answer period.

Here are the Top Ten Reasons they give for destroying the bayou and how to answer.

 

 

Seeing What Will be Destroyed: Our Article in the Houston Chronicle

July 26, 2014

The Bayou Banks We Could Lose

Once again, a flood-control project threatens Buffalo Bayou

By Susan Chadwick for the Houston Chronicle

July 25, 2014 | Updated: July 25, 2014 3:21pm

We have pulled the canoe up to a clean, white sandy beach on Buffalo Bayou in the middle of the city. It’s still early morning, and all along our slow paddle from the bridge at Woodway great white egrets and a great blue heron fly ahead of us, leading us to our destination: the prehistoric cliffs and forested banks that could soon be obliterated by the Harris County Flood Control District.

It’s a bizarre project, all the more incomprehensible in that the project is primarily promoted by the influential Bayou Preservation Association (BPA), founded in the 1960s to prevent the flood-control district from bulldozing the natural beauty of Buffalo Bayou.

Read the rest of the article in the online edition of the Houston Chronicle. Note: This article also appeared in the print edition of the Chronicle on Sunday, August 3, 2014, Page G4.

Blue heron tracks in the mud on Buffalo Bayou. Photo by Jim Olive

Blue heron tracks in the mud on Buffalo Bayou. Photo by Jim Olive

A Misguided Project and Waste of Public Funds

July 19, 2014

Often the best project is to let the river fix itself. — Mathias Kondolf, “Meander Bends, Landscape Preferences, and River Restoration.” p. 51

Mathias Kondolf is one of the world’s leading river scientists. He recently wrote a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers recommending that the corps deny Harris County a permit to bulldoze the wild banks of Buffalo Bayou in and around Memorial Park.

The $6 million project would remove most of the riparian buffer from nearly 1.5 miles of some of the last remaining stretch of natural bayou in our city, demonstrating to landowners up and down the bayou and elsewhere the exact wrong thing to do. By far the most beautiful and healthiest stretch of the bayou, as it flows past Memorial Park and the Hogg Bird Sanctuary this shady, slow-moving wild bayou belongs to all of us. And amazingly, it is right here in the middle of our big city.

The project, promoted by the Bayou Preservation Association and officially a project of the Harris County Flood Control District, has no scientific or any other justification, says Kondolf. He points out that even the HCFCD says in its permit application that the stream is “recovering” (from something) and questions the county’s odd claim that razing the trees and vegetation, excavating and filling in the banks, and realigning the channel would “decrease the time needed for natural recovery.”

Kondolf points out that the existing riparian habitat is of “high quality,” that the erosion rate of the banks in the target area as estimated by the county is “not really problematic,” and notes that the construction project itself would likely dump three times more sediment into the waterway than this area does in a year.

Read Mathias Kondolf’s letter to the Army Corps of Engineers.

The forested banks of Buffalo Bayou as it flows past Memorial Park, on the left, and the River Oaks Country Club, on the right. All this would be razed by the Bayou Preservation Association's plan to "restore" the bayou.

The forested banks of Buffalo Bayou as it flows past Memorial Park, on the left, and the River Oaks Country Club, on the right. All this would be razed by the Bayou Preservation Association’s plan to “restore” the bayou. Photo taken July 13, 2014.

Deadline Monday, June 30, for Comments Opposing the Bulldozing of Our Beautiful, Wild Buffalo Bayou

June 29, 2014

The deadline is Monday, June 30, for the Army Corps of Engineers to receive your comments opposing a permit for Harris County to destroy nearly 1.5 miles of our wild Buffalo Bayou in and around Memorial Park, including the Hogg Bird Sanctuary. The fight for the life of our proud, southern bayou will continue, and we will prevail with your help.

However, you must let the ACE  as well as all our political representatives know that you oppose this bizarre, wasteful $6 million project. Here’s how to do that. In addition you can sign the MoveOn.org petition that will be sent to the proper authorities on Monday.

The pointless, destructive project that we oppose is being dishonestly promoted as a “restoration project aimed at reducing erosion and sedimentation and improving water quality, while providing for improved aquatic resource functions,” according to the permit application from the Harris County Flood Control District. (See page 13 of the permit application. Warning: big pdf file.)

Their project will do none of those things, and the plain proof is in their own permit application.

Our Buffalo Bayou Is Not in Need of Restoration

1. The first thing to know is that the bayou here is not in need of restoration. Buffalo Bayou as it flows between Memorial Park and the Hogg Bird Sanctuary on the north and the River Oaks Country Club on the south is some of our last natural bayou and riparian wilderness remaining to the people of Houston.

This, our most beautiful reach of the bayou, long preserved as part of our public park, is in better condition than any altered stretch of the bayou, and to know why it’s important to understand what a riparian forest buffer is. A riparian forest already does everything that they claim to be the purpose of this boondoggle: it controls erosion and sedimentation, improves water quality, filters pollution, slows storm waters, etc. Every single academic and professional paper you can find emphasizes the importance of protecting riparian buffer. No true river scientist advocates bulldozing riparian buffer.

  • The condition of most of the riparian buffer on the banks of our Memorial Park is rated as near-perfect, a score of 4.5 out of 5, according to the county’s own permit application. See page 450 in the permit application.
  • A magnificent, very old high bluff in the Hogg Bird Sanctuary, and the lovely tributary it overlooks, have perfect riparian buffer. (Pages 533 and 557).
  • Even much of the south bank owned by the country club has near perfect riparian buffer.
  • Overall the riparian forest in the entire project area has a near-perfect average score of 4.5, and there will be no significant improvement from this costly project. “The overall Riparian Buffer Variable is anticipated to stay at high sub-optimal (Score 4.5) level.” (Page 452.)
  • The average score of our natural riparian forest in this area is significantly reduced by the eroding lawns of a few large, private homes on the north bank and the inclusion of edges of the manicured golf course on the south bank.

The riparian forest of our public park is functioning as it should. Why should we sacrifice our beautiful, naturally functioning bayou because private homeowners stripped the riparian buffer on their property to create lawns? Why should we taxpayers pay millions to restore private property while destroying our own public property?

When They Say Restoration, They Mean Destruction

2. What do they mean by “restoration?”

Since our bayou forest is fine, in order to “restore” it, they first have to destroy it.

They will do this by bringing heavy equipment into our park and cutting access roads to the bayou through the forest. (See Map 1.) They will use the bulldozers and backhoes to strip the trees and vegetation from eighty percent of the project area (not thirty percent as claimed by the Bayou Preservation Association), regardless of its condition and including in the scenic Hogg tributary. (See Map 2.) They will scrape up the riparian sand and soil in the banks, the ancient sandstone and red clay (our geologic history) and archeological remains, and cart it away somewhere. They will dig out and cut new channels in the bayou, lay down logs and other stuff, fill in parts of the bayou, which includes more than two dozen wetlands, deface and cover up the thousands-year-old high bluffs, bring the soil and sand back, grade the banks and create new slopes, cover the new banks with fiber mats and Bermuda grass, and plant some lilies and trees.

Map 1: The dotted red lines show the 14.35 acres of riparian forest to be scraped and bulldozed. According to the HCFCD, 80 percent of the vegetation in the targeted area will be removed. Note the areas to be cleared of trees extends into the interior of Memorial Park towards the maintenance facility. This is for access by heavy equipment to the bayou. Also note the land and forest to be lost by the River Oaks Country Club on the south, and the destruction of a scenic tributary and a magnificent high bluff in the Hogg Bird Sanctuary on the north.

Map 1: The dotted red lines show the 14.35 acres of riparian forest to be scraped and bulldozed. According to the HCFCD, 80 percent of the vegetation in the targeted area will be removed. Note the areas to be cleared of trees extends into the interior of Memorial Park towards the maintenance facility. This is for access by heavy equipment to the bayou. Also note the land and forest to be lost by the River Oaks Country Club on the south, and the destruction of a scenic tributary and a magnificent high bluff in the Hogg Bird Sanctuary on the north.

Why Do They Need to Bulldoze the Forest In Order to Restore It?

3. Why don’t they just plant trees and shrubs, etc. on the few bank areas where the riparian buffer is poor? Much cheaper and less complicated. The Bayou Preservation Association, which bizarrely supports this destructive project, in a four-page position paper dated June 23, 2014, says that “the pattern of storm water releases … from the Addicks and Barker Reservoirs makes the re-vegetation approach untenable.”

But doesn’t this also apply to their purported plans to re-vegetate the 80 percent of the project length that they plan to strip and recreate? Or do they plan to leave their newly “restored” banks essentially bare and shadeless?

Erosion and Sedimentation Will Not Be Reduced, and Water Quality Will Not Be Improved.

4. The HCFCD permit application claims that this small natural riparian area contributes “approximately 359 tons per year of soil erosion.” (Page 447.) That sounds like a lot, but our analysts have put that into perspective. If you spread out that entire year’s worth of soil erosion on a football field between the twenty and forty yard lines, the sediment would be only nine inches high.

The vast majority of the sediment comes from further upstream. (See page 446.) Buffalo Bayou is twenty-six miles long from the Addicks and Barker dams in Katy to the Sabine Street bridge downtown. This short but significant project area in and around our Memorial Park is our best natural, functioning bayou. It contributes only an infinitesimal amount of sediment to the waterway. There is no evidence anywhere in the application permit, no scientific studies, no explanation of how or why excavating and filling in and rechanneling the bayou reduces erosion better than the natural system already in place.

Furthermore, removal of sediment from the water has no impact on the amount of bacteria in the water. This is according to the expert analysis of Dr. George Guillen, executive director of the Environmental Institute of Houston and an associate professor of biology and environmental science at UH-Clear Lake.

But don’t listen to us. Read the HCFCD’s application permit. Page 452: Water quality will not be improved.

Map 2: Areas of the natural banks of Buffalo Bayou to be excavated and filled. Yellow is excavate. Orange is fill.

Map 2: Areas of the natural banks of Buffalo Bayou to be excavated and filled. Yellow is excavate. Orange is fill.

This Project to Destroy Our Beautiful Buffalo is Nothing Other than the Same Old Flood Control Project to Make Buffalo Bayou a Bigger Drainage Ditch.

“The project purpose is … improvements to the dimension, pattern, and profile allowing the stream to convey storm water and sediment loads more efficiently.” Page 2 of the permit application.

This stealth flood control project is a joint venture between Harris County, the City of Houston, and the River Oaks Country Club. Each entity is contributing $2 million to the $6 million cost of the “demonstration” project, and the Houston city council voted last June to approve and fund it. This zombie channelization plan, a “holistic” variant of proposals long opposed by the Bayou Preservation Association, was largely conceived by the board of the BPA, who must be in need of work, do-nothing preservation being too passive and non-remunerative to somebody, and is actively promoted by the BPA and the Memorial Park Conservancy despite the huge of loss of trees and wildlife habitat, and damage to the bayou and our great public park.

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.

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?

Does this look like ecological improvement to you?

Dave Rosgen says our Buffalo Bayou is natural, functional, stable.

June 10, 2014

Listen to river guru Dave Rosgen describe the wild section of our Buffalo Bayou that Harris County wants to destroy as a “living, functional river system right here in the middle of Houston.”

The Harris County Flood Control District, Memorial Park Conservancy, and the Bayou Preservation Association all cite Rosgen in support of their bizarre, pointless plan to bulldoze the riparian forest on Buffalo Bayou in and around Memorial Park.

But here is what Rosgen himself had to say in 2009 about the health and stability of that very section of Buffalo Bayou. In this video Rosgen is standing on the bridge to the Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens looking upstream towards the area targeted for destruction by Harris County.

Watch the interview with Dave Rosgen.

Photo by G.O. Jackson Jr.

Photo by G.O. Jackson Jr.

Defense Team on KPFT Tuesday, May 20, 3-4 p.m.

May 19, 2014

Members of the Save Buffalo Bayou defensive team will be on the Eco-Ology radio show on KPFT Tuesday, May 20, from 3 to 4 p.m. Listen to Olive Hershey, Brandt Mannchen, and Frank Salzhandler talk about why bulldozing the riparian forest on both banks of Buffalo Bayou as it flows through our historic Memorial Park and the Hogg Bird Sanctuary is an appalling idea.

Hershey is a poet, novelist, and environmental activist. Mannchen is a biologist and chair of the Forestry Committee of the Houston Sierra Club. Salzhandler is a former All-American UT swimmer, rabble rouser, director of the Endangered Species Media Project and chair of the Natural Heritage Program for the Harris County Historical Commission.

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