The only thing I've seen continue to happen is to build subdivisions in flood planes, and plans for new highway construction at ground level. Oh wait, you were asking about projects that would help the issues.

the astrodome is being turned into a giant retention pond

If you could dig like that in Houston we would have an elaborate subway system that got you from your flooded house in the burbs to downtown in 20 minutes.

The cost and time to do that and the land required would be astronomical

Houston is full. Move to El Paso

Add in houston is built on a swamp

Deepening Addicks and Barker does no good unless you lower the outlet channels that flow into Buffalo Bayou. Then you need to lower (and probably widen) the bayou all the way to the bay. It's a hopeless battle against flat land and gravity. And do I even need to mention that such an incredibly expensive construction project would require federal dollars. Good luck getting that in the budget. The Ike Dike to protect all the petrochemical plants along the ship channel is much more important from a national standpoint.

drumboy said:

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From my next door. Thanks, Houston, for building bike trails along the bayou.....why are my bike trails flooding?!

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mememememememememeememememememme, it's all about me.

Trails along bayous will always be flooded when it rains. Why?

Because theyre in the floodway!

Texaggie7nine said:

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But something something... Netherlands.... something something .... dikes!!

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That was the last mayor.

Here's the deal with flood mitigation - you don't just go out and start digging holes or widening bayous, creeks, etc. Unfortunately this is the real world, and that means that the political tool of "shovel ready" projects is a bunch of garbage and doesn't exist.

If anybody here knows me and my posting history, I generally bag pretty hard on engineers and designers. But this is a case where I won't, because doing the hydraulic studies and compiling information (which is still being gathered and processed from the various holiday floods we've had over the last few years) takes time. I know this is the "here and now!" world, but you can't here and now good data to come up with good plans. Otherwise you are spinning your wheels and burning through tax dollars for no reason. It's simply going to take time to analyze the current situation and formulate a good plan that might have an impact on flooding.

As mentioned though, we are limited in this area with what we can do because the bayous and creeks and rivers are limited in their capacity to channel water the 8 feet down in elevation to the bay. It's just something that has to be accepted - no matter how fast you get water off the streets, the natural drainage channels can only hold so much capacity.

The bigger issues are going to be whether or not politicians (so basically "not") re-evaluate how development is done. As long as developers can show that their development has no impact, undeveloped areas will continue to have impervious cover added and more water will need to be directed to the bayous. Problem is that all of that data is done in a vacuum and not incorporated into larger models showing the areas around that also have no impact in a vacuum. Together they end up with major impacts to drainage, and in rain storms a significantly larger volume of water is now introduced into the drainage system than what was previously introduced, and then it becomes Houston we have a problem.

As far as projects go - I know Brazos River Authority has finished up with a massive lower basin modeling study that should provide a lot of information on flood plains, carrying capacity, etc. Doesn't have quite the effect on Houston proper. The City of Houston in conjunction with CWA is in the middle of accepting bids for some improvements and strengthening to the Lake Houston dam, Harris County is working on some regionalized flood control projects that will have some small impacts (most mentioned here). But by in large, most of the funding is likely going towards impact studies at this point so that future projects can be modeled to have as much of an impact as practical.

D.C. like Houston was built in a swamp.

Bondag said:

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AlaskanAg99 said:

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Trails along bayous will always be flooded when it rains. Why?

Because theyre in the floodway!

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So you are telling me the county spends money building parks, golf courses, bike trails, baseball fields and soccer fields in areas that they know will flood.

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My sarcasm meter might be broken but isn't that the point of putting such improvements into flood prone areas? They're low-impact, don't increase impervious ground cover, and are relatively cheap to maintain and recover from floods as opposed to normal residential or commercial development.