Posted on April 19, 2018
By Kaila Contreras, Chron
Governor Greg Abbott received applause from a crowd of Kingwood residents at Los Cucos Mexican Restaurant Monday night when he announced dredging of the San Jacinto River will begin in two weeks.
After the governor authorized funding from the state’s hazard and mitigation fund to conduct a study of the entire riverbed to figure out what type of sand dredging could be done to alleviate flooding in March, Abbott said that study has now been completed and will be released sometime this week.
“The study has been completed — it will be issued this week. And we have to have the study before you can do this next thing and that is to put it out for contract and get bids on it,” Abbott said. “We expect it to be dredging in two or three weeks from today.”
Abbott said the San Jacinto River Authority and the City of Houston is also currently working on making sure the water levels are held at appropriate levels to diminish the possibility of future flooding. The two entities are working to lower water levels on Lake Conroe and Lake Houston.
“We’ve all kind of come to the understanding that the gates on Lake Houston are inadequate. So one of our goals, that we have the money for, is to put new gates on Lake Houston to get the water out faster and better to diminish the possibility of flooding,” Abbott said.
In a previous Houston Chronicle article Abbott said he and Houston City Councilman Dave Martin witnessed a stunning amount of sand mining operations during a helicopter tour of the river in mid March. He said he was able to understand more comprehensively the way in which sand mining operations contributed sand and silt buildup in the river.
Immediately after Abbott’s tour of the San Jacinto River, he directed the Texas Commission of Enviromental Quality to undertake an investigation of the sand mining operations to make sure they had a legal permit to be mining sand and doing everything lawfully.
Abbott informed the crowd TCEQ has already brought two enforcement actions againt sand mining operations and are still investigating.
Source: Chron
