{"id":1361,"date":"2015-02-05T16:57:15","date_gmt":"2015-02-05T22:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.savebuffalobayou.org\/?page_id=1361"},"modified":"2017-10-11T17:53:31","modified_gmt":"2017-10-11T22:53:31","slug":"leave-the-bayou-alone-says-bpas-water-quality-director","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.savebuffalobayou.org\/?page_id=1361","title":{"rendered":"But It’s Best to Leave the Bayou Alone, Says BPA\u2019s Water Quality Director"},"content":{"rendered":"

February 5, 2015<\/p>\n

We lost track of the number of times our jaws dropped listening to Steve Hupp present the Bayou Preservation Association\u2019s<\/a> argument for destroying one of the last natural stretches of Buffalo Bayou in Houston.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. Hupp lamented that a representative of Flood Control wasn\u2019t 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 \u201cbank restoration and stabilization,\u201d is called the Memorial Park Demonstration Project (MPDP). Demonstrating exactly the wrong thing to do on the bayou by razing the riparian forest, the project will destroy the bayou\u2019s ecosystem and, according to the BPA, re-engineer it to \u201ca more natural state.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

City Council Member Oliver Pennington<\/a> was at the meeting. Pennington, who is running for mayor<\/a>, represents District G, which includes Briar Forest way out there and much closer into town, the south bank of Buffalo Bayou in the \u201cbank restoration\u201d 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 \u201cstabilization\u201d 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<\/a>, moving closer and closer to the edges of the high banks of the bayou. (Hupp, in his Power Point presentation, showed a series of aerial photos of this process, although that was not his point in showing the photos.) Alas, replacing forest with manicured lawn has weakened the integrity of the banks. (Mowed grass has short roots, and deep roots are part of what holds riverbanks together.) More recently the process of rebuilding the club golf course has involved killing off the grass and vegetation on the high banks, felling old trees, bulldozing the denuded soil and running heavy equipment over the banks, all of which further destabilizes the banks and dumps tons of muddy sediment into the bayou.<\/p>\n

The new golf course plan is by Tom Fazio<\/a>, famous for his shoreline and over-the-water golf course designs.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>

An aerial photo taken in 1953 of the bayou and surrounding riparian forest in the project area.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Google<\/a>

Google Earth image of the project area April 2014. Note the loss of forest on the south bank from enlargement of the golf course.<\/p><\/div>\n

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“Normalizing\u201d the bayou<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pennington, who spoke before Hupp\u2019s presentation, said he was \u201cnot an expert\u201d but that he voted in favor of spending $2 million of city taxpayer money to bulldoze, dredge, and channelize the wild bayou in Memorial Park because it would \u201cnormalize\u201d the bayou \u201cto the way it originally was.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was a theme brought up by Hupp, who showed a painted 1908 postcard of Long Reach, a section of Buffalo Bayou along Magnolia Park near the Houston Ship Channel.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A postcard painted in 1908 of Long Reach, Buffalo Bayou, flowing past Magnolia Park near the Houston Ship Channel on the far east side of downtown.<\/p><\/div>\n

For comparison see this July 2014 photo of Buffalo Bayou in the area targeted for \u201crestoration\u201d by the BPA and the Flood Control District.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

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 will be razed by the Bayou Preservation Association’s plan to “restore” the bayou.<\/p><\/div>\n

As another example of what the new, \u201crestored\u201d bayou will look like, Hupp, who claims the \u201crestoration\u201d project will eventually produce a closed canopy forest over the bayou (not depicted in the 1908 postcard), also showed a photograph of a 2006 \u201cnatural channel design\u201d project on Cypress Creek in Meyer Park in west Houston.<\/p>\n

\"Meyer<\/a>

Meyer Park, Cypress Creek, in October 2006. The Harris County Flood Control District uses this as an example of what Buffalo Bayou in Memorial Park will look like after “restoration” to a “more natural state.”<\/p><\/div>\n

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Here is what that section of Cypress Creek looked like last May, eight years later. Do you see trees forming a canopy or even overhanging the creek?<\/p>\n

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\"Meyer<\/a>

Meyer Park on Cypress Creek, May 2014, eight years after “natural channel design” engineering.<\/p><\/div>\n

A project to control flooding or not? More water flowing faster or not?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We thought we heard Pennington mention flooding as a reason for his support for the project. But then Hupp, when asked about this later in the evening, said the project would not reduce flooding, contradicting the purpose of the project as described by Michael Bloom, sustainability manager at R. G. Miller Engineering<\/a> and a member of the board of the BPA. During our presentation to the Briar Forest council in December, Bloom, as we understood him, said that channelizing the bayou was needed to increase the capacity of the bayou to carry stormwater and that all that riparian vegetation in Memorial Park was \u201cchoking\u201d up the river and causing water to back up and flood west Houston. This is the view of Buffalo Bayou as nothing but a \u201cbig drainage ditch\u201d as articulated by Harris County Precinct 3 Commissioner Steve Radack<\/a> after our appearance at Commissioners\u2019 Court in early December. Radack\u2019s west Houston precinct includes much of Buffalo Bayou from Addicks and Barker dams and reservoirs, Terry Hershey and Bear Creek parks all the way eastward to Loop 610.<\/p>\n

The Flood Control District\u2019s application for a federal permit<\/a> says in several places that the project will allow \u201cthe stream to convey stormwater and sediment loads more efficiently.\u201d None of our experts could think of any way this could happen without increasing the volume and velocity of the water flowing through the project area.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the permit application says that razing and grading the slopes of the banks of the bayou to create \u201cbankfull benches\u201d will \u201cdecrease instream velocity.\u201d But Mathias Kondolf of the University of California at Berkeley<\/a>, one of the world\u2019s leading river scientists, said in his comment letter to the Corps <\/a>about the project that removing riparian \u201croughness\u201d (vegetation) from the floodplain has been shown to increase the velocity \u201cacross the floodplain.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Flood Control District and the Corps have been exchanging comments and responses about the project, according to Dwayne Johnson, regulatory project manager for the Corps\u2019 Galveston District office. Johnson said in an email Jan. 20 that he expects that within the next thirty to sixty days the Corps will have a response and possible new Public Notice with request for comments only on the changes made since the original Public Notice about the permit application last year.<\/p>\n

Sand on the sidewalks<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the Briar Forest meeting, Pennington then said that flooding had nothing to do with his support. He was in favor of the project because it would \u201ckeep sand off the sidewalks of Buffalo Bayou Park\u201d downstream east of Shepherd.<\/p>\n

Sadly, this misguided \u201ckeeping sand off the sidewalks\u201d argument is the stated reason that the Buffalo Bayou Partnership<\/a> also supports the bulldozing project. But, as we have repeatedly pointed out<\/a>, the amount of sediment contributed by this historic natural area is miniscule and the project itself will most likely result in a great deal more \u201csand on the sidewalks.\u201d Moreover, according to our experts, the increased flow and velocity of the water resulting from a deeper, shorter, smoother river will likely increase erosion within the project area as well as along the vulnerable and eroding banks of the BBP\u2019s popular, still unfinished Buffalo Bayou Park downstream between Memorial Drive and Allen Parkway.<\/p>\n

But Hupp claimed that water would be going through the project reach at the same rate as before. There would be no increase in volume or velocity, he said.<\/p>\n

Among Hupp\u2019s other statements that surprised us:<\/p>\n