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.
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
State of the Bayou
Downed Trees. New Channel. New Riprap. Washed Out Sidewalks, Beavers, and Turtles
But Some Banks Naturally Rebuilding
Does It Make Sense to Repair?
Sept. 1, 2016
Updated Sept. 11, 2016
You could not step twice into the same river. Heraclitus
We finally had a chance recently to float down beautiful Buffalo Bayou to see how things have changed. Our trip took us past Memorial Park in the middle of Houston. We also biked along the bayou through Terry Hershey Park far upstream in west Houston below the dams to see what was happening there.
The good news is that some of the high banks that had slumped in Memorial Park and the Hogg Bird Sanctuary during the Memorial Day 2015 flooding are naturally rebuilding.
The bad news is that the River Oaks Country Club has added more riprap to the south bank, hard armoring the bank with ugly, damaging concrete rubble, including where it should not be.
Nature’s Miraculous Way of Restoring. For Free.
Houston has had multiple record-breaking rains and flooding since the spring of 2015. When Buffalo Bayou overflows its high banks, as it did in the Memorial Day flood of 2015, the banks in places sometimes slump or slide away. This happens when the overflowing water seeps through the ground and saturates layers of sandy clay that liquefy, sometimes causing the bank to give way. Buffalo Bayou is 18,000 years old, and this has been happening for a very long time.
This natural tendency to slump is one reason why we think attempting to engineer these banks as proposed by the $6 million Memorial Park Demonstration Project won’t work. It’s also the reason why we think building and repeatedly repairing sidewalks at the bayou’s edge is wasteful and foolish.
The south-facing high bank of the Hogg Bird Sanctuary collapsed during the Memorial Day flood in 2015. Now self-restored. Photo on August 4, 2016.
Cutting, Removing Fallen Trees on Bayou Banks is Wrong
Brush Creates New Banks and Needs to Stay
Aug. 28, 2015
Updated Aug. 29, 2015, with a response from the Harris County Flood Control District.
We were afraid of this.
Big floods are powerful. Anyone who has lived on or spent any time on a river in the wild knows that a river can rearrange its banks with an awesome, even frightening force. Yet floods in nature are necessary.
Buffalo Bayou is an 18,000-year-old river, our Mother Bayou. We are privileged to have a forested stretch of the bayou passing through the middle of the city in our great public Memorial Park. But during the Memorial Day flood and the record-high water released by the Army Corps of Engineers from the upstream dams during the days that followed, the rushing bayou took down trees and shrubs in Memorial Park, the Hogg Bird Sanctuary and elsewhere. The bayou was reordering its banks, replenishing and reseeding the floodplain, adjusting to the changing flow, as it has done for a very long time.
Downed trees on Buffalo Bayou in the Hogg Bird Sanctuary after the Memorial Day flood. These trees and brush will trap sediment and rebuild the banks. They should be left in place. Photo taken on May 28, 2015 by Jim Olive.
Not all of this was erosion exactly. Our geologists explain that some of it was slumping caused by the overflowing of the banks. The overflowing floodwater saturated the high ground and seeped into the internal layers of clay soil that turned to pudding and slid out, creating the concave look that you see on some of the banks. This particular slippery geologic makeup of Buffalo Bayou is one reason why we believe the Harris County Flood Control District’s costly and misguided $6 million “stabilization” project, known as the Memorial Park Demonstration Project, won’t work on the high banks of our untamed Buffalo Bayou, a rare natural asset to have and learn from in the middle of the city.
Our Muddy, Maligned, Mistreated Bayou Knows Better
But trees and brush falling onto the banks (and into the water) is part of a natural process, an important natural rebuilding process. The brush collects sediment from the waters of the bayou, building up new banks that the bayou replants with stabilizing and colonizing native vegetation. Yes, amazingly, our muddy, maligned and mistreated living bayou does that, with its own superior intelligence and life force. The bayou restores itself, replenishing its important ability to filter pollutants, neutralize bad bacteria, cleanse the water, protect against further erosion and provide aquatic habitat, among many other important functions, including trapping our trash and plastic debris before it ends up in the bay and oceans.
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