March 18, 2015<\/span> Updated: March 18, 2015 11:20am<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n Is the traditional vision of local and urban flood control agencies in conflict with federal and state agencies charged with protecting the health of our waterways?<\/p>\n Let me explain how I came to ask myself this question about mission conflict.<\/p>\n I grew up on Buffalo Bayou in Houston, and since early last spring I have been involved with a campaign to stop a flood control project that would destroy and then attempt to rebuild a healthy and relatively untouched riparian forest corridor running through the center of our city. It’s pretty rare to have a stretch of fairly wild river running through the middle of such a large city. The late great conservationist Army Emmott described our Buffalo Bayou as a ribbon of life running through the concrete. And that’s what it is: a living thing, a diverse and dynamic ecosystem that shows us the wondrous process of nature.<\/p>\n We are even more fortunate that in the words of the great river scientist Mathias Kondolf of Berkeley, this enchanting river has “room to move.” Here, in the middle of the city, we have space to “let the river be a river”\u00a0\u2014 to let its banks change and its forest garden grow, as they would naturally. Dr. Kondolf traveled through this reach of the bayou<\/a> in November, a reach that has never been channelized. The nearly 1.5-mile stretch targeted for destruction flows between the riparian forest and great cliffs of a public park (Memorial Park) and the forested terraces and high banks of a private golf course.<\/p>\n Read the rest of this article in the Houston Chronicle<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n Note: This opinion piece is adapted from a presentation delivered February 12, 2015, at Texas’ first Urban Riparian Symposium, sponsored by the Texas Water Resources Institute<\/a>, the Texas Riparian Association<\/a>, and the City of Austin.<\/a><\/p>\n
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