RedNose511 said:

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I live in Kingwood and have been thinking back and realized there was no warning that flooding my occur from the opening of the gates in Lake Conroe. I have been scouring the internet to see if I missed something and came across this. I then have been looking at the Lake Conroe water levels for the past few months and it only fluctuated a couple of feet. My question is when they knew Harvey was coming and it would dump massive amounts of rain, why didn't they start releasing the water then?

Lake Houston rose 24" in less than 12 hours after they opened to gates. I just think it is wrong and put many peoples lives in danger.

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That was addressed earlier in this thread in one of the linked articles. SJRA stated that in the short time they had prior to Harvey, they could not release enough water to make a meaningful dent in and pool height on Conroe, and any attempt to do so would have served to "preload" Lake Houston and the rest of the downstream watersheds that were expected to get a bunch of rain too. They faced a crappy set of options and picked what they believed to be the least bad choice. The communication could have been handled better, but they didn't have much choice in what they had to do when it came time to release. They didn't have anything like the CoE did regarding advance notice of the need to release, because Conroe was rising much faster than Addicks or Barker.

Not releasing at Conroe wasn't an option...it would have put far more lives in danger by putting the dam at risk of failure.

"The negligence comes in when someone in Montgomery county says oh **** we have a problem and then puts the flood gates at 11 with very little notice and consequences be damned."

You do realize that communities in Montgomery County flooded as a result of the dam release as well. You honestly think they endangered their own citizens to maintain recreational boating?

The reference they made to the valuable resource they want to preserve was drinking water. The aquifers in that county have been overproduced and Lake Conroe now supplies drinking water to The Woodlands and other communities.

The OP may not care, but many homes on lake Conroe flooded as well. You can bet those home owners wanted more water released than what was once the decision was made to do so, but it was a controlled release to limit additional yet imminent flooding. So everyone loses this round to Mother Nature.

Lake Conroe is a critical water supply to both Montgomery and Harris Counties, which is why SJRA attempts to keep it as full as possible without flooding.

Pre-releasing takes weeks to accomplish, not days. That was clearly layer out in both articles posted. Fact is all of that water was headed for Kingwood regardless, it just would have taken the place of other watershed space had it been released earlier. So what difference does it make if the "Conroe" water is at the top or bottom of the flood?

Many friends in Kingwood--feel your pain but your anger is misdirected. God bless

Bag said:

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Not a plot, just criminal negligence. A fundamental lack of communication between the two counties.

Did you know that they drained lake Houston before hand? I am very interested to know what prep lake Conroe did. The prerelease should have coordinated.

Zero warning
No evacuation orders
No mention of lake Conroe or Kingwood on the news
The mayor or our county judge never mentioned the danger in Kingwood even though the ******* national guard, Tenn Ohio, Alabama national guard were all setting up in the back of Kingwood, again, no warning, none.

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My wife and I talked about this last night. We were at On The Park (toy store) on Monday around noon since they were open and the kids had cabin fever, and when we got home, my wife saw on FB somebody saying to get off of Kingwood Dr because the Conroe release was on it's way. In a matter of a couple of hours, it was under. That's what really surprised us because there were so many people out on the roads at that time and some businesses trying to be open with skeleton crews for the community, and zero warning from the news as to what could be coming. For most of people in Kingwood, they probably assumed Hamblen Rd would be under like it always is and maybe some of the more low lying areas of the community.

Officials/news/anyone in tv told everyone in the greater Houston area to stay home and stay off the road about every 5 minutes.

How much clearer can it be?

I also remember hearing on Ch2 that Conroe was doing emergency releases and people downstream needed to evacuate...and them warning people out and about in Kingwood to go home because Kingwood drive was going to flood. So there were warnings. Maybe not hours ahead of time, but there were warnings as soon as they knew what they had to do.

Lake Houston waterfront owner here! My family has lived on the lake since 1974...we own 5 lakefront homes between us...and an extra lot.


They drained the lake a few days before. It lowered about 6-12" from my view (did not measure obviously.) I can't believe there is any foul play here. Conroe is now used as a storage unit for lake houston b/c lake houston is now COH drinking water. It is almost as if no one remembers 2011 when the SJRA lowered conroe to fill lake houston. anyone???


Other tin foil stuff on this thread:
(1) property value for taxes - lol - the CADs get you regardless of water level...and in reality, every sale increases taxable value b/c they typically have lakefront valued lower than actual (unlike other high dollar area where inventory moves quickly.

(2) kingwood people - i love kingwood. i love kingwood people. they do always seem to be acting like their life is perfect and complaining when it is not. They probably have the biggest pride vs. property value issue on the planet. People living in a 279k house acting like they are in River Oaks...so silly!

(3) Eff lake conroe - bulkheaded-up POS! No tin foil here



This was a great flood. We had two houses flood, one on east side and one on the west side. The west side was a disaster b/c the wind/waves were kicking like it was a Cat 1 hurricane.

I have also never seen so many boat docks being uprooted before. My backyard had over 80 linear foot of boat dock laying in it. Most of them have two problems (1) Ringshank nails only...seriously...building permits require bolts at runner joints joints...how did this get by? (2) space your deck out....it needs to allow flow when underwater. I broke code with my dock with screws on every board as well !

Bag is basically a Bag full of BS if you haven't noticed.....

Where'd he go? His wife must have taken his phone away.

To act like there is a SOP for a record, historic, unprecedented event is dumb. No one was negligent, **** happens. If you want to be mad, get mad at God. He's the one that allowed it.

I've been cleaning houses for 3 days. I'm sorry the hurricane inconvenienced you. It inconvenienced a lot of people. They told the whole Houston area to stay off the roads and you're complaining they didn't come knock on your door personally and say "hey, we mean you too".

Save it. They warned you. You didn't listen.

I'm not going to sit here and argue with you.
I was in Kingwood today. The people I was with understood what "unprecedented" means.

This thing sucked for everyone. It's not necessary to place blame on someone for a weather event.

Bag said:

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I have lived here since 86. I know 13 people personally that flooded, none had insurance and none had flooded prior to this event.

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Then you know 13 idiots, because it is just stupid to not have flood insurance anywhere on the Texas coast, much less an area that is surrounded by river systems that flood on a near annual basis.

Bag said:

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The lake was drained before Harvey, I have pictures to prove it

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No, you dont.

SJRA/COH may have preemptively lowered the levels of LH, but they certainly did not drain it. LH has a minimum requirement level in order to supply water for the NEWTP, which supplies water for a good portion of northern Houston. By statute they cannot drain the lake.

As mentioned previously, Conroe is a supply lake for LH drinking water, as well as Conroe and Montgomery County warer supply. They are not flood control lakes and cannot be treated as such.

In hindsight it is easy to scream and yell that we should have foreseen the volume of water and completely drained the lakes (which would have shut off water supply for about a million people, but never mind those trivial details) so that the basins could be used to capture the rainwater. Easy if you are a petulant child without the ability to understand the basic operation of the water supply system.

Why do y'all keep referencing the county when discussing Laks Conroe ops? The county had nothing to do with it and who knows if the SJRA informed the county of anything.

07fta07 said:

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pepe the dog said:

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Just sayin.....flood insurance runs around $500 a year.

Most people spend that much at Starbucks.

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If you truly can't afford flood insurance, you can't afford your home.
If you choose not to buy it because you "have never flooded", well, that's on you.

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Doesn't make it any less sad.