Posted on April 26, 2018
Fort Bend County Commissioners Court on April 24 unanimously authorized the county engineer to retain AECOM Technical Services Inc. to conduct a high-level study evaluating the feasibility and potential cost of enclosing the back side of the Barker Reservoir with a levee system.
“As I stated today in court,” said Precinct 3 Commissioner Andy Meyers, “I wish to thank County Judge Bob Hebert for his leadership in pursuing this agreement with AECOM. I support this study for several reasons but none greater than this – never again, should our citizens and property owners have to solely rely on the federal government and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for protection from the Barker Reservoir.”
The agreement calls for the cost of the study not to exceed $67,200. The money was transferred from the Commissioners Court Projects into an Engineering Project Account. The agreement is to end no later than Sept. 30, 2019. The study is to be completed within 90 days from the notice to proceed.
After the study has been completed and reviewed this summer, Meyers said he will give residents the results and outline the next steps in partnership with the community and other government entities.
The project overview in the agreement states: “AECOM Technical Services Inc. will conduct a high-level study to evaluate the feasibility and potential cost of enclosing the back-side of Barker Reservoir and pumping extreme event inflows from the various upstream channels into the reservoir in order to contain the flood pool within government owned land by increasing the accessible storage volume within the reservoir.”
Meyers said 20 levee systems in Fort Bend County guard thousands of lives and billions of dollars in private property and infrastructure.
“Three years of record floods have proved those levees’ worth many times over as they guarded our citizens from the floodwaters of the Brazos River and its tributaries. In this AECOM study, we will ask world-class engineers to perform the analysis and calculations of what can feasibly be done with a levee along the Barker Reservoir to protect private property from the operations of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,” said Meyers.
“Countless homeowners, flooding experts, and drainage district directors have approached me and other elected officials in recent months and asked the County to examine a lot of different options for flood mitigation. A number of these plans would be extremely helpful to us and I fully support the third reservoir in Cypress Creek, lowering the flood pool in the Barker and Addicks reservoirs, and the need for increased downstream conveyance along Buffalo Bayou.
“But the costs and the required time to construct these projects are high. And frankly, as a conservative Texan, I’m losing sleep at the idea of solely trusting the federal government to fully fix the messes they’ve made with the reservoirs. The people I do trust are the ones I stand beside right here in our community,” Meyers said.
“So when I’m asked how we can approach the Corps and the men who control the Barker Reservoir, to ask them for operational changes, more communication, and for ways they can protect us – I say that Katy homeowners can turn that premise on its head. Through this study, we want to examine what our community can do to protect ourselves from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and how a levee can be a centerpiece of that protection.”
Meyers said officials spent many months soliciting informal input about this concept with the Harris County Flood Control District, Stephen Costello of the City of Houston, numerous engineering firms, and directors and legal counsel from the Willow Fork Drainage District.
“In choosing AECOM, we partner with a firm that is ranked No. 1 in Engineering News Record’s “Top 500 Design Firms” for eight consecutive years and has been named one of Fortune magazine’s “World’s Most Admired Companies” for four consecutive years,” said Meyers.
Source: Chron
