Lake Houston Recovery Campaign Relies on Community Involvement

State Rep. Dan Huberty helped with legislation passed in 2011, fining businesses conducting illegal sand mining operations.

“If you’re flying over the San Jacinto River, you’ll see all the sand mining operations that are up and down that river, but there’s a ton of those illegal sand mining operations – a ton of them,” Huberty said.

The legislation’s inclusion of fines made the sand mining bill controversial among Republicans, he said, but believes it was the right thing to do. Now, after Hurricane Harvey’s impact on Lake Houston, Huberty said the legislation should have taken penalties for illegal sand mining even further.

“Hindsight being 20-20, the fines should have been triple, or quadruple, because all that sand that was up there on the San Jacinto River ended up in the (Humble) Costco parking lot, ended up on the golf course (in Kingwood,) ended up all the way down the San Jacinto River,” Huberty said. “So, the entire condition of the San Jacinto River has changed.”

The build-up of siltation in the San Jacinto River and Lake Houston was one of the main reasons for the unprecedented flooding that occurred in surrounding communities during Hurricane Harvey, according to the Lake Houston Area Long Term Recovery Task Force.

The task force launched Recover Lake Houston, a project to repair and protect Lake Houston communities from flooding disasters like what was experienced during Hurricane Harvey.

“We got a group of different elected officials representing all of our communities, all the major stakeholders, that come together to try to tackle the issue of recovery and prevention – those are the two big things,” said Jenna Armstrong, president and CEO of the Lake Houston Area Chamber of Commerce. “Dr. Guy Sconzo, former superintendent of Humble ISD, is heading that up for us.”

Now, they are calling on the community to join and spread the word about the first Recover Lake Houston initiative – the Plea for 3 letter writing campaign.

The campaign urges people to fill out and email pre-populated letters to their state officials, state representative and state senator. The letters outline specific demands created by the Task Force on behalf of the Lake Houston community.

“The Plea for 3 is asking for three different things – remediation, reduction, representation,” Armstrong said.

Remediation

Remediation refers to the dredging of the San Jacinto River and Lake Houston. The letter requests the provision of complete funding for these dredging projects, as well as a “stricter enforcement of TCEQ regulations on legal and illegal sand mining operations.”

“We’ve got to dredge the tributaries, we’ve got to dredge the lake, we’ve got to get rid of the sand that’s causing – Fosters Mill is an example – to go underwater,” Huberty said. “That should have never happened. The Enclave going underwater – that should’ve never happened. It’s a direct result of: There’s no place for the water to go. …We have to do that. You start small and you have a constant dredging program as we continue to go forward.”

Reduction

‘Reduction’ refers to the immediate lowering of the Lake Conroe pooling level from 201 feet above sea level to 198 feet above sea level.

The San Jacinto River Authority was supposed to open every valve at the Lake Conroe Dam when the water level reached 207 feet above sea level, explained Dave Martin, Houston city council member. On the day the SJRA released the Lake Conroe Dam during Hurricane Harvey, the water level had reached 206 feet.

The release of water from the Lake Conroe Dam at 80,000 cubic feet per second is referred to as a primary cause of the extent to which Lake Houston area’s homes and businesses flooded, by Martin, Huberty, and the Lake Houston Area Long Term Recovery Task Force.

The temporary solution these entities call for until permanent remediation efforts are carried out is to increase the capacity in Lake Conroe so more water can be collected before it gets to the point at which the dam must be opened.

“What we’re asking the governor to do is to give us a little bit of capacity,” Martin said. “Right now we have eighteen inches of capacity before they have to open up a flood gate. …So, governor, please take us immediately down from 201 to 198 in a slow systematic release of water so that we don’t impact people downstream from Lake Houston Dam. And then also give us a couple of (SJRA) board seats so that we have a voice in the decision-making process.”

Representation

None of the five governor-appointed SJRA board members live downstream from the Lake Conroe Dam, Martin said.

“There are zero board members in the SJRA board that are downstream,” Martin said. “Every one of the board members are upstream protecting their property. No one has a voice in the decision-making process that lives downstream.”

The Plea for 3 calls for the addition of three interim SJRA board members who represent the downstream communities that were impacted.

“We’re asking for the three interim board positions on the SJRA to serve until we get a legislative – some type of bill passed that addresses this,” Armstrong said.

According to Martin, the future of Kingwood and other Lake Houston communities revolves around getting the attention of elected officials and demanding that remediation efforts be taken seriously.

Martin set a goal of getting 20,000 letters emailed to officials through the Plea for 3 campaign.

Armstrong said the emails are just one aspect of the campaign they need the community to help with.

“We need you to share this request with your friends, families, employees, your co-workers, with people you go to church with – everybody you can think of,” Armstrong said.

She asks people to share using the campaign hashtags, #PleaFor3LakeHouston and #RecoverLakeHouston.

“We need you to spread it on social media,” She said. “Social media’s been really quiet about this so far. We need your help.”

Armstrong said a catastrophe like this could happen again to Lake Houston if people don’t work together to call attention to the need for immediate remediation efforts.

“It’s incumbent upon all of us to make it happen,” Armstrong said. “It’s not going to happen if we don’t come together and we don’t make noise and if we don’t demand that somebody pays attention to Lake Houston.

“I can tell you right now, there is no money for our area in the governor’s plans right now with the exception of Humble ISD. There is no money to dredge, or no money to put in any type of preventative measures to make sure this doesn’t happen again. We are not included in the plans for funding that he’s submitting. And that has to change, and it’s not going to change if we stay quiet. It’s going to take everybody in here coming together and demanding that we get change.”

For more information, or to join the Plea for 3 campaign, visit www.recoverlakehouston.com.

Source: Chron