Posted on December 21, 2017
By Mihir Zaveri, Houston Chronicle
Harris County Commissioners Court voted unanimously Tuesday to move forward with designing the final $14 million stretch of a massive, decades-long project to widen and deepen Brays Bayou.
Since the late 1980s, the Harris County Flood Control District and the Army Corps of Engineers methodically have been working to increase the bayou’s ability to handle floodwaters, through a combination of detention basins and widening and deepening of the channel, aimed at providing relief to oft-flooded neighborhoods like Meyerland and the Texas Medical Center.
On Tuesday, Commissioners Court voted in favor of paying CivilTech Engineering nearly $600,000 to design the final stretch of the project from South Rice to Fondren. Construction is expected to begin next summer and be completed in 2021 – the most expansive project the district ever has undertaken.
“We’re actually finishing a multi-decade, $500 million-plus mega-project,” said Matt Zeve, director of operations at the flood control district. “It’s pretty significant. We’ve been working on Project Brays for a very long time.”
The vote was one of several flood control initiatives advanced by county leaders Tuesday, nearly four months after Hurricane Harvey battered the Houston region, drenching it in more than 51 inches of rain in some areas, killing dozens and flooding hundreds of thousands of homes and other buildings.
$550 million price tag
The court also voted unanimously to design a massive stormwater detention basin on Greens Bayou, hire a firm to handle the county’s efforts to get reimbursed by the federal government for tens of millions of dollars Harvey-related expenses and to buy out nine more properties flooded during the storm.
The roughly 700,000 people living in the Brays Bayou watershed have been hit repeatedly by severe floods in recent years, including during Memorial Day 2015 and Harvey.
The project – conducted in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – is expected to remove roughly 15,000 homes and businesses from the bayou’s 100-year flood plain downstream of Beltway 8. The 100-year flood plain is determined by how much water is expected to spill out of the bayou’s banks during a 100-year storm, or an amount of rainfall that has a 1 percent chance of occurring during any given year.
In addition to the widening and deepening of the bayou, the project’s overall scope includes retrofitting or replacing more than 30 bridges along the bayou that could hamper the flow of stormwater. The project also includes the construction of four stormwater detention basins that could hold 3.5 billion gallons of water and keep it from flowing out of the bayou’s banks.
The total price tag of the project, which began with an Army Corps study in 1988, is roughly $550 million.
“It’s the largest mega-project the district has done,” Zeve said.
Delayed federal reimbursements have slowed the project, which was supposed to be completed in 2014. The county and the Corps split the Project Brays costs 50-50, though the county typically pays up front and awaits reimbursement. The county originally expected to get $25 million in annual federal reimbursements, but actual funding has averaged less than half that.
In October, the Texas Water Development Board voted to lend the city of Houston $47 million for the Brays Bayou project to help speed up the oft-delayed work. An agreement for the city to give the money to the flood control district has not been finalized, Zeve said.
“If we don’t get the money, then we would have to spread the construction out over more years,” he said.
Approved Tuesday, the stormwater detention basin on Greens Bayou will be located near Aldine-Westfield Road and Beltway 8, complementing a slew of other projects aimed at improving the bayou and its tributaries’ limited capacity to handle floodwaters. Greens Bayou ranks among the worst in the county in its ability to carry stormwater, flood control district Executive Director Russ Poppe said.
Several people died in Greens Bayou floodwaters during Hurricane Harvey, and neighborhoods along the bayou, including Greenspoint, were among the hardest hit during Harvey and the Tax Day floods.
Buying out properties
Zeve said the Army Corps also is widening and deepening the bayou between Veterans Memorial Drive and Cutten Road.
Also Tuesday, Commissioners Court voted in favor of paying PricewaterhouseCoopers Public Sector LLP $2 million to help secure reimbursements from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for costs incurred during Harvey.
Harris County Engineer John Blount said the exact amount to be recouped could be upward of $100 million.
Blount said the requests could include money to flood-proof county buildings or reimburse mileage for emergency responders rescuing people during the storm. The reimbursements would be on top of $45 million in FEMA money received by the county for debris removal in September.
Blount said the reimbursement likely would be a years-long process.
“We haven’t been reimbursed completely for Ike,” he said.
Commissioners Court also voted to buy out nine properties that flooded during Harvey, part of a larger push to purchase and demolish homes that flood repeatedly.
Blount said the county has demolished nine homes and bought out 22 others along the San Jacinto River in Banana Bend, Highland Shores and Sandbar estates neighborhoods. Nearly 100 other homes have offers or appraisals pending.
Blount could not provide a dollar figure for the amount the county had paid for the homes, but Commissioners Court authorized spending roughly $20 million in September for the buyouts.
Source: Houston Chronicle
