{"id":3547,"date":"2017-01-23T23:42:53","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T05:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.savebuffalobayou.org\/?p=3547"},"modified":"2017-01-29T18:17:39","modified_gmt":"2017-01-30T00:17:39","slug":"money-down-the-drain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.savebuffalobayou.org\/?p=3547","title":{"rendered":"Money Down the Drain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Widening and Deepening Our Waterways Is Not the Answer to Flooding<\/em><\/h4>\n

Chadwick: Practices to reduce flooding risk are out of line with our region’s needs<\/strong><\/h3>\n

“We just can’t keep developing the way we’ve been developing”<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Susan Chadwick, Houston Chronicle<\/em> <\/a>Outlook, Jan. 23, 2017<\/p>\n

Houstonians last week once again found themselves facing flooded homes and cars, closed schools, roads and transport. No doubt they were asking, “Why does this keep happening?”<\/p>\n

Maybe it’s because our political leaders are prioritizing the wrong solutions and are treating the symptoms instead of the problem. Widening and deepening bayous, a top priority for city and county officials, is an ineffective, environmentally damaging and unnecessarily costly approach to reducing flooding.<\/p>\n

Yet widening and deepening bayous is the stated policy and practice of the Harris County Flood Control District and a recommendation of Mayor Sylvester Turner’s 2016 Transition Report on ReBuild Houston, a report largely written by engineers. The practice also is embraced by conventional wisdom. Widening bayou channels was one of a number of responses to the region’s flooding problems listed in a recent Chronicle article, “How to Fix the Houston Floods,” by Dylan Baddour (HoustonChronicle.com, Dec. 31<\/a>), as well as in a commentary by former mayoral candidate Bill King (“Homeowners puzzled by increase in floods” Page A13, Jan. 13<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Here’s why widening and deepening our bayous and streams is the wrong approach:<\/p>\n

Read the rest of this article in the Houston Chronicle.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Carlos<\/a>

Carlos Gutierrez is calf-deep in water from heavy overnight rains at his house near the 2600 block of Creston on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2017. Photo for the Houston Chronicle<\/em> by Brett Coomer.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Widening and Deepening Our Waterways Is Not the Answer to Flooding Chadwick: Practices to reduce flooding risk are out of line with our region’s needs “We just can’t keep developing the way we’ve been developing” By Susan Chadwick, Houston Chronicle Outlook, Jan. 23, 2017 Houstonians last week once again found…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.savebuffalobayou.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.savebuffalobayou.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.savebuffalobayou.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.savebuffalobayou.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.savebuffalobayou.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3547"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.savebuffalobayou.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3560,"href":"https:\/\/www.savebuffalobayou.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3547\/revisions\/3560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.savebuffalobayou.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.savebuffalobayou.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.savebuffalobayou.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}