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Kingwood flooding doesn't pass the smell test

76,904 Views | 567 Replies | Last: 5 yr ago by notheranymore
Ferris Wheel Allstar
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reddog90 said:

Bag said:

The lake was drained before Harvey, I have pictures to prove it
Pony up.
How about a link that shows water levels pretty much remained constant the past few weeks until the storm?

Looks like 2000 acre-ft were let loose. I do not think that is a significant amount considering it jumped 30,000 acre-ft from the reading two days ago.

https://waterdatafortexas.org/reservoirs/individual/houston
RedNose511
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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.
txags92
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RedNose511 said:

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.
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.
Bismarck
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"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.
cheeky
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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
Bassmaster
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I know it doesn't make as much of a difference as releasing water into the river, but 1 week before the storm I know for a fact that Conroe was being pumped into Lewis Creek reservoir. When they do that, the bass stack up at the inflow on Lewis Creek and I tore them up the Saturday before the storm.
LostInLA07
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Water from Lewis Creek was being released into Conroe during the rain so pumping water into Lewis Creek was likely part of the normal operations of the power plant.
aTm2004
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Bag said:

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.


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.
07fta07
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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?
txags92
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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.
aTm2004
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07fta07 said:

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?

With all the focus on the west side and central area, also given zero flooding at the time in KE, and I can't remember when KW Dr had water on it, people venture out... especially after 3 days of being cooped up.

I appreciate you being an ass though. You should drive around and tell the people who got flooded that they should have gotten the hell outta Dodge because it was flooding everywhere else where the attention was. They're easy to spot. They're the ones with the inside of their house on the curb. Oh wait...they did right by staying off the roads...
aTm2004
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We had the news going all day and didn't hear anything about it until it happened. 99% of the focus was on Barker and Addicks.
Bassmaster
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I understand, I didn't explain like I should have. The only point I was trying to make was that the poster above who basically said that keeping water levels perfect at Conroe was the number one priority and every other consideration is subservient is incorrect. The water levels at the power plant are very important and they can turn the pumps on/off to pump water.
evestor1
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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 !
JustPanda
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Bag is basically a Bag full of BS if you haven't noticed.....
Agmechanic
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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.
RingOfive
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evestor1 said:



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


Deep, bulkheaded lake >>>>>>>>>> shallow, stumpy lake.
07fta07
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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.
aTm2004
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I've been cleaning a house as well. My brothers was completely underwater and the current took the brick off of one side of his house. I was over there all day demoing. You can take the "inconvenienced" and shove it.

Also, it's not just me in the area that are wondering why there wasn't much warning for anybody here. We don't need our hands held, but there looked to be zero focus on the area from the media. Sorry that you're too damn cold to understand that people who've had their lives ruined have questions. So, for all of them...kindly STFU.

Another edit since you need it broken down into simple terms...questions does not equal blame. Hopefully you understand that.
Rick Dalton
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07fta07
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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.
aTm2004
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Where am I trying to place blame? I thought I stated it pretty simple.
schmellba99
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Bag said:

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


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.
schmellba99
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Bag said:

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


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.
aTm2004
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From those that I know who got flooded, they aren't angry, but they do have questions. We all know that the rain that the Houston area received was an unprecedented amount and that there would be flooding. People expected that, and nobody is question it. Mainly, they want to know why Montgomery County wasn't doing something like Harris County was and out in front of the media telling people what was being released and where they predicted or felt the release to impact and how much. It comes down to simple communication, and many feel it wasn't there, or if it was, it was severely lacking. I don't know of anybody who is out to try to get somebody fired or looking for somebody to place blame, but just to have the whole story for closure and anticipation that something can be learned from this for the future.
schmellba99
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LH has two control gates for flow control. It also has a significant armored weir and overflow channel to the west of the gates that theoretically would only allow the water level to reach a certain height that I cannot remember at the moment. 59 feet maybe?
LostInLA07
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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.
aTm2004
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SJRA, specifically.
Finn Maccumhail
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schmellba99 said:

LH has two control gates for flow control. It also has a significant armored weir and overflow channel to the west of the gates that theoretically would only allow the water level to reach a certain height that I cannot remember at the moment. 59 feet maybe?
I've been told that the gates haven't worked in years.

And even if they did the tops are only at 45' while the top of the spillway is just shy of 42'. Lake Houston didn't get but slightly over 52'. The spillway is lower than the highest point of the dam which is at just over 60' on one side and 48' on the other of the spillway.

I sat at home and listened to the news warn of flooding here but nobody expected this. We had over 30" of rain across the hundreds of square miles of the watershed and it all stacks up here. Above the 1960 bridge is the narrowest, shallowest portion of the lake and you've got Spring Creek, Cypress Creek, West Fork, Caney Creek, Peach Creek, East Fork, and Luces Bayou all draining into the lake very, very close to each other. Plus the 1960 bridge and the "island" cause everything to stack up above 1960.

I'm sure the flows from Conroe made the flooding worse, but to what extent? Maybe 10% worse? 20%? I don't know but I do know the Memorial Day floods a couple years ago flooded Kings Harbor and so did a whole lot of Kingwood south of Kingwood Drive and that was nothing compared to Harvey.

From what I can tell the Memorial Day 2015 floods pushed Lake Houston to about 45' with huge releases from Lake Conroe and like I said, that flooded the hell outta Kingwood.
redag06
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Lake Houston currently holds about half of what it did when it was built, this needs to be corrected, with emphasis on the top half.
OXDL45
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Finally got the chance to see many of the pictures and video of the flooding in Kingwood. It was a whole lot worse than what I had thought.
88jrt06
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07fta07 said:

pepe the dog said:

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

Most people spend that much at Starbucks.

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.


Doesn't make it any less sad.
07fta07
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It's sad. It's a horrible time for a lot of people. I know a lot of people who flooded, a whole lot. Some with and some without insurance. I do have a hard time feeling too sorry, financially, for the people who chose not to protect themselves with insurance.
JustPanda
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You sound like a great Christian!
75AG
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I lived in Kingwood until 2011. Our house never flooded in in previous floods. Let me repeat. My house never flooded in any previous floods. Ever.

That said, I had flood insurance because we had a pool and I never knew exactly where that water would go. Plus FI was super cheap

It's a shame people didn't have FI, but I can certainly understand their decision.

 
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