Remembering Harvey: Dams and flood plains
Opinion // Outlook
Dec. 30, 2017 Updated: Jan. 1, 2018 8:06 p.m.
2of2Fourteen-year-old Deleon Gambel works his way through Buffalo Bayou overflow post-Harvey on his way to check on his neighbors.
Before Hurricane Harvey hit, all too many people living in the Houston area were blissfully unaware of the critical importance of the Barker and Addicks dams. Even people living in the flood pools around the dams didn't know their neighborhoods were specifically targeted for inundation during major storms. The damage done in those subdivisions was stunning, but a catastrophic failure of the dams could have been apocalyptic.
On the west side, two earthen berms have held back a wall of water that, if it breaks free, would create a deluge unseen since Hurricane Katrina submerged New Orleans.
A failure at Addicks alone would leave nearly 7,000 people dead and inflict $22.7 billion in property damage, Houston Chronicle reporter Lauren Caruba wrote last year.
So if you think the situation is bad enough, that is how things gets worse …
We'd like to tell you that these dams, located near the intersection of Interstate 10 and Texas 6, are up-to-date marvels of technology and that everything was under control. But we'd be lying.
The Corps branded both dams with the agency's worst safety rating and labeled them as being at "extremely high risk of catastrophic failure" in 2009. Only four other dams in the nation earned that rock-bottom rating, and none are near a city as big as Houston.
RELATED: Harvey exposed every point of weakness
A breach would send forth a half-mile-wide wall of water powerful enough to knock homes off their foundations, Precinct 3 County Commissioner Steve Radack told the editorial board. Imagine an inland tsunami sweeping east along the Energy Corridor toward the central business district, killing upward of 7,000 people.
"It's next to impossible to get people to believe the unbelievable," Radack said.
A disaster of this scale may seem unthinkable, but environmental and engineering activists have been ringing the warning bell for years.
This page wrote an editorial last year urging local and federal officials to make the dams an immediate priority. "There's always the chance, however small," we wrote, "that the next storm will be 'the perfect storm.' " We may be living through it. Harris County, though, has preferred to focus on development foremost, even allowing construction within the reservoirs themselves.
About 31,000 property owners in Harris and Fort Bend counties learned only after Hurricane Harvey that their homes lie in an area the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers knew it might have to inundate. Whole subdivisions were built in the flood pools behind the Barker and Addicks dams, areas federal authorities considered dry lake beds designated to go underwater in an emergency. A corps official later said there was no question homes in those subdivisions would flood someday, it was only a question of when it would happen.
And yet, many of the people living in this area had no idea their neighborhoods were basically doomed to flood. As hard as it is to believe, that critical information was never revealed to homebuyers. This stunning lack of disclosure is one of the many issues that state lawmakers need to address in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.
It is too late for studies and delays - Houston needs action. Any Harvey recovery bill must include the funding necessary to bolster our two existing reservoirs and construct a third on Cypress Creek. Experts have pegged the bill at $500 million. That project is priority No. 1. Following close behind are $300 million to update bayou infrastructure and a whopping $15 billion for coastal storm surge protection.
The cost of a new reservoir may seem hefty, but the price of a worst-case scenario on Houston's west side would be incalculable.
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