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By Susan Chadwick, Houston Chronicle<\/a><\/em>, Nov. 20, 2019<\/p>\n The park on that warm, sunny day looked gorgeous, lush, green and glittered with goldenrod. The feathery purple blooms of the Gulf Muhly grass wafted alongside the trails.<\/p>\n But what about that orange plastic netting everywhere, the iron barriers and warning signs, the closed trails and sidewalks collapsing into the water, the white entrails of irrigation pipes hanging out of the dirt?<\/p>\n Buffalo Bayou Park<\/a> between Allen Parkway and Memorial Drive is one of Houston\u2019s great treasures, providing a rare experience of nature in the city. The lovely 160-acre park is the result of a $58 million landscaping effort, led by the Buffalo Bayou Partnership<\/a>, funded largely by private donations, though the public annually provides some $2 million in maintenance and operating funds for the park through the Downtown Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ) #3<\/a>. Designed by landscape architecture firm SWA Group<\/a>, the park has won national and international awards.<\/p>\n But what\u2019s happening to the banks of the bayou there?<\/p>\n Regularly described as \u201cdesigned to flood<\/a>,\u201d the park, built in a floodway, was more or less completed just in time for what Eric Berger and Matt Lanza have called \u201cthe wettest period in Houston history<\/a>.\u201d The Harris County Flood Control District had just finished a $5 million project to stabilize the banks. Now it\u2019s in more trouble than ever.<\/p>\n Read the rest of this editorial in the Houston Chronicle<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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