Float In The Air Down Buffalo Bayou With Houston Photographer Jim Olive
Updated April 30, 2017
Updated Oct. 2, 2016
Travel down the remarkable historic stretch of our 18,000-year-old bayou proposed for “restoration” by the Harris County Flood Control District and the City of Houston. The $6 million project, now estimated to cost as much at least $12 million, violates virtually every Best Management Practice for riparian areas. By cutting down the trees and vegetation, digging up, landscaping, and running heavy equipment over the banks (as well as in the channel) the project demonstrates to landowners exactly the wrong thing to do for protecting property against erosion. The plan would pointlessly destroy and rebuild over 1.25 miles of a forested, naturally-functioning bayou as it flows past Memorial Park and the Hogg Bird Sanctuary on the north and the River Oaks Country Club on the south. This is an irreplaceable public asset, a historic nature area accessible to all, and it should be preserved.
Photos taken on October 2, 2015, Sept. 29, 2016, and April 7, 2017. Thank you, Jim Olive!
This first gallery shows Jim’s aerial photos taken on April 7, 2017. Compare these photos with the flood control district’s plan for digging up, filling in, and rearranging our beautiful bayou through this lovely woodland area. In the linked graphic, orange is fill and yellow is excavate.
These are Jim’s aerial photos taken in October of 2015 and September 2016.
Slide #15 makes the problem most apparent. There are expensive homes on one side, and expensive golf course on the other. All risk should be on these property owners, but they are using HCFCD to put the burden on us.
Turn the golf couse into a large fishing/retention reservoir. Homes are saved, river saved, public access saved. Win. Win. Glad Mr. Tapley isn’t here to see this degradation of his beloved bayou.