Sept. 18, 2014
If more city people understood how rivers work, they would know why our wild Buffalo Bayou should be left alone in and around Memorial Park and why the project to bulldoze it is pointless, wrong, and won’t work.
Interested in learning about the living process of a stream and the importance of riparian zones? Want to find out more about proper land use and management to protect riverfront property against erosion?
Save Buffalo Bayou is developing an educational program about urban riparian areas. But the basic principles are the same for streams in the city and in the country. For now you can learn from an expert at Texas A&M.
The Texas Riparian Association is holding a Riparian and Stream Ecosystem Workshop on September 24, 2014, from 8 am to 4 pm at Whites Park Community Center, 219 White Memorial Park Road in Hankamer near Anahuac, about an hour east of Houston.
Riparian forest on Buffalo Bayou. Photo by Jim Olive.
The rains have come in a big way, today, Friday, September 19th, inundating the bayou with high water. Can you imagine what would happen today in that riparian zone, if stripped of its roots system? It would all wash away, the high water would take it all away.
Indeed, it would wash away if they strip the wild bayou of its protective riparian forest. And we are monitoring the newly landscaped bayou, scraped of much of its remaining riparian vegetation east of Shepherd towards downtown, to see how well it’s holding up to erosion.