Good grief. Why can't you guys look at the comparison other than black/white?

Geesh.

CDUB98 said:

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Good grief. Why can't you guys look at the comparison other than black/white?

Geesh.

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This isn't the politics board? Double meaning intended.

I read the "sneer" comment a couple times and couldn't figure out who he was addressing or what he was responding to.

Mr. AGSPRT04 said:

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Can someone link to the old plan to install massive buried storm sewer pipes from west to east of downtown?

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This one which didn't get built when they had the chance?

https://www.scribd.com/document/358064224/Katy-Freeway-Corridor-Flood-Control-Study

The "sneer" comment was in response to others who were saying we shouldn't expect to do better because it isn't much of a problem when compared to flooding situations in other places. Perhaps, I didn't understand what they were saying.

So first of all, my comment about the proposed 1000 acre reservoir on Spring Creek is that is so small it wouldn't even be a factor. Lake Houston has the storage of 120000 acre ft and it was a blip in the amount of water that was going through it. So unless the reservoir was going to be more than 120 feet deep (newsflash: it wasn't), putting much hope in that reservoir to save the Kingwood is folly.

Secondly, I brought up the Japan flooding as simply a comparison of how well our flood mitigation system works especially for the amount of rain that we got from Harvey. Of course it can be better, but there is stupid money and smart money.

Smart money:
- Building flood control reservoirs of significant capacity to dampen rising flood waters. This would include the White Oak Reservoir possibly, or the Cypress Creek Reservoir. These are going to probably cause some heartache these days because the are likely going to have to condemn some housing for this.
- Building the Ike Dike to protect the city from storm surges to make sure the water flowing downhill has somewhere to go.

Stupid Money:
- Building Massive (and I mean massive) underground tunnels to get water from Addicks and Barker to the ship channel avoiding Buffalo Bayou. This is estimated to be about $6 billion and it would be probably much more to build 8 - 12'x12' tunnels 40+ miles 100 feet underground from Katy to Pasadena.
- Trying to turn Lake Conroe into a flood control reservoirs.

Lake Conroe doesn't need to do anything except manage the outflow better. They are lowering the Lake 2 feet during hurricane season for the next few years, until dredging and the flood controls on Lake Houston can be completed. The flooding from by Lake Conroe was primarily caused by lowering the lake level by 2.8 feet in 30 hours. Nobody outside the 100 year plain would have flooded in Kingwood if Conroe hadn't panicked (or whatever they did).

The Lake Houston spillway was the pinch point for Kingwood. Water piled up 8 feet at the spillway, and another 10 feet at the N end (i.e. Kingwood). Maintaining waterways (which should be done anyway) and adding flood gates to Lake Houston are the most economical things to do in NE Harris county.

Did anyone ever estimate how many acre feet of water were outside of the 100 year floodplain around Lake Houston at the peak of the flooding during Harvey?

Being able to clear it out faster sounds good, but I don't know what that does downstream.

My stupid money solution is to build a massive levee on the south bank of Cypress Creek, another one on the east bank of the West Fork, and a gigantic dam behind the Humble Costco. You'd have to buy out everyone east of the Hardy off Cypresswood, but who's counting?

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Did anyone ever estimate how many acre feet of water were outside of the 100 year floodplain around Lake Houston at the peak of the flooding during Harvey?

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Similar estimates have been undertaken. I saw one calculation that adding flood gates to Lake Houston would have mitigated about 2 feet of water at peak flooding. This alone would have essentially constrained all of the flooding to the 100 year plain (and not everybody there flooded during Harvey). Given the 4 feet of rain, this would have been a pretty reasonable outcome.

Based on what I saw in my neighborhood, a more controlled release from Lake Conroe would have been worth another 2 feet, but that's just my guess, having seen the water rise, talking to neighbors who lived there in '94, etc.

Temporary solutions seem to involve how water is held. More permanent ones will decide how water is moved. Bad money - AT LEAST FOR FLOOD CONTROL - would seem to be spent on ways to hold water. However, we probably need more ways to hold water wrt the water supply.

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Building flood control reservoirs of significant capacity to dampen rising flood waters.

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Kind of a hybrid solution to buy a little time. Maybe we could market them to tourists - come visit our seasonally empty pit!

CDUB98 said:

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Dear god, not 94chem and his Lake Conroe shtick again. You've already been proven wrong more than once.

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Lake Conroe began releasing water at 80,000 cfps when the lake level was at approx. 205.8 feet. After they began this, the lake crested a few hours later at approx. 206.2 feet. They are authorized to maintain that level, or up to 207 ft, before compulsory release. Rapid water rise happened in Kingwood approx 24 hours later, exactly when it would be expected.

The lake began to go down, and the 80,000 cfps rate was maintained until the level reached approx. 203.4 feet, approximately 30 hours later.

What part of that has been proven wrong? This is all in the historical record.

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Another 2 feet from a controlled release of Lake Conroe would have required another 170000 cfs not flowing into Lake Houston from Lake Conroe. We do have a problem here because Lake Conroe peaked at 79000 cfs.

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Those are interesting numbers, which certainly make you think about things like equilibrium kinetics and steady state flow.

Here's a science question for you. If you shake a champagne bottle before opening it, does the cork actually fly farther?

94chem said:

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The med center fared MUCH better during Harvey, with twice as much rain, than it did during Allison. We are thankful that MD Anderson survived this time as well as it did.

As for evacuating 6 million people, that's about 3 city blocks in most Japanese cities. If we had as much population density as Japan, we would have moved that many people during Katrina, Rita, Ike, or Harvey.

Greater Houston needs a lot of work.

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There is only one city in Japan with more than 6 million people.

just ignore that whack job.

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There is only one city in Japan with more than 6 million people.

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I know. And Katy, Texas, only has 17,000.

1994 and 2002 Flooding

Conroe contributed about 17% of the water in 1994. In 2002, no percentage is given, but the 24 hour lag between releases and reaching the bridge on 59 is accurate. Interesting headline, too.

As for Conroe being concerned about more rain on the way and reducing the lake by 3 feet in one day, I have not seen SJRA address the topic. They even visited Kingwood with a 100+ slide presentation, and not once did they address this issue.

94chem said:

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There is only one city in Japan with more than 6 million people.

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I know. And Katy, Texas, only has 17,000.

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Are you suggesting that Japan has multiple entire municipalities that are entirely within...what was your example?...three blocks?

From the SJRA Harvey FAQ:

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A. The main two goals of SJRA's gate operations are (i) to protect the spillway gates and the dam's
earthen embankment, and (ii) to ensure that the peak flowrate released from the dam is always LOWER than the peak inflow coming into the lake. In terms of protecting the spillway gates, it is important that water not be allowed to flow over the top of the spillway gates. As the lake level rises, the gates must
be raised so that excess storm flows can be passed under the gates. In terms of peak flowrates, during
the Hurricane Harvey event, the peak flowrate coming into Lake Conroe was approximately 130,000 cfs. The peak release rate going out of the dam was 79,100 cfs. This means that Lake Conroe reduced the amount of flow that would have gone down the river by about 40 percent while keeping the water level in the lake within the six-foot flowage easement.

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The way the gates at Lake Conroe work is that the tops of the gates have to be kept up above the top of the water level. So even if they wanted to stop releasing water from Lake Conroe when they were at 205.8 ft, they couldn't because if they closed the gates back down to what you think is closed, water would be coming over the top and rip the gates off and all hell would break loose. So they had to bring the gates down gradually to match the level of the lake. Now, I can't find detailed release info from Lake Conroe but I would bet that it was let down after the incoming rates started to decrease. Lake Conroe does not act like Addicks and Barker and can just keep water forever at an elevation. But that is again because it is not a Flood Control Reservoir. It is a water supply reservoir.

FHKChE07 said:

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So first of all, my comment about the proposed 1000 acre reservoir on Spring Creek is that is so small it wouldn't even be a factor. Lake Houston has the storage of 120000 acre ft and it was a blip in the amount of water that was going through it. So unless the reservoir was going to be more than 120 feet deep (newsflash: it wasn't), putting much hope in that reservoir to save the Kingwood is folly.

Secondly, I brought up the Japan flooding as simply a comparison of how well our flood mitigation system works especially for the amount of rain that we got from Harvey. Of course it can be better, but there is stupid money and smart money.

Smart money:
- Building flood control reservoirs of significant capacity to dampen rising flood waters. This would include the White Oak Reservoir possibly, or the Cypress Creek Reservoir. These are going to probably cause some heartache these days because the are likely going to have to condemn some housing for this.
- Building the Ike Dike to protect the city from storm surges to make sure the water flowing downhill has somewhere to go.

Stupid Money:
- Building Massive (and I mean massive) underground tunnels to get water from Addicks and Barker to the ship channel avoiding Buffalo Bayou. This is estimated to be about $6 billion and it would be probably much more to build 8 - 12'x12' tunnels 40+ miles 100 feet underground from Katy to Pasadena.
- Trying to turn Lake Conroe into a flood control reservoirs.

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Move that to the stupid money column.

Gap said:

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I feel like we have some people here who would defend the New Orleans levee boards who got complacent in their diligence and maintenance. There are certainly areas of Harris County that now flood far more often than they used to when we get a significant rain. No one is asking for or thinks that flooding can be eliminated but I thought there was pretty close to a 100% consensus after all the recent flooding that maintenance needed to be done better and there might be major projects that could make a material difference with the flooding. Additionally, looking at whether all the development to the west was having an impact on flooding which could be helped by another reservoir was on the table. When did taking a look at this and determining what actions to take become something to sneer at?

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You aren't reading well then.

We have several (most) people that understand that mitigation doesn't equate to elimination, and that money has to be spent wisely for there to be any meaningful impact.

And there there are others that think Kingwood should be saved at all costs, even if the rest of the urban area is completely wiped off the map and whom have been absolutely owned with facts, logic, numbers, etc. on the basics of the Harvey flood...but whom still hold the opinion that Kingwood was flooded simply because of a conspiracy theory that Conroe is out to get those rich folks downstream.

http://www.sjra.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Hurricane-Harvey-Peak-Inflows-083017.pdf

I'll bite. Why do you think that it would be stupid? Projects like this have been shown to work other places like the Netherlands and London.

JJxvi said:

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94chem said:

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There is only one city in Japan with more than 6 million people.

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I know. And Katy, Texas, only has 17,000.

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Are you suggesting that Japan has multiple entire municipalities that are entirely within...what was your example?...three blocks?

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No, but almost 4 million people evacuated for Hurricane Rita, about 1.3 million alone from NO for Katrina, and over a million for Ike. Magnitude of disaster, damages, and fatalities may not correlate well to evacuation numbers.

FHKChE07 said:

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I'll bite. Why do you think that it would be stupid? Projects like this have been shown to work other places like the Netherlands and London.

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We have a series of levees along the coast that are existing. They are marginally effective IMO, expensive to build and jack up the ecosystem.

They will do nothing in terms of letting bayou/river water have a place to go - one of the bigger issues with Harvey that gets very little discussion is the storm surge aspect and how it significantly slowed drainage. We are on the coast, dependent upon the tides for drainage. A levee that lets a storm surge stack up does nothing to mitigate drainage inside the levee. All it does is compound the issue on inside and out (in a Harvey type event).

Money and time would be better spent looking at developments in the collective and getting a realistic flood and drainage survey done instead of looking at every development in a vacuum. That way you can actually see the issue as a whole versus trying to look at a million individual issues and trying to piece them together.

At some point there are simply limitations that are governed by topography, and we pretty much have jack and **** of that to begin with.

"but whom still hold the opinion that Kingwood was flooded simply because of a conspiracy theory that Conroe is out to get those rich folks downstream."

This myth of "Kingwood rich folks" must predate my time here. Sure, it's not Aldine, but as far as the suburbs go, Kingwood is well behind Katy, Cypress, The Woodlands, Sugar Land - and often far behind - in measures such as median income and home values. A lot of people live here because they can't afford other suburbs, and certainly not places like West U, Bellaire, Memorial, Midtown, etc.