At one point, the water was like 10+ feet over the spillway. It was an enormous amount of water.

FHKChE07 said:

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At one point, the water was like 10+ feet over the spillway. It was an enormous amount of water.

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It may have been 1-2 feet higher. I am on east side 7500' away from spillway. My boat lift motors are 11' higher than spillway elevation...and they got submerged.

FHKChE07 said:

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At one point, the water was like 10+ feet over the spillway. It was an enormous amount of water.

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I want to say it was about 14 feet, but I may be off a foot either way.

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I still want an LA river style massive paved ditch with a straight shot from the dam to the bay.

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which is basically worthless in a hurricane with storm surge, unless you have locks along the way, it turns into reverse funnel for water to come rushing upstream. But if you have locks, then you pretty much negate the point of your outlet to the gulf.

As mentioned earlier, the 1960 bridge is a huge issue with Lake Houston during major flood events(Harvey & '94)

BQ_90 said:

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I still want an LA river style massive paved ditch with a straight shot from the dam to the bay.

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which is basically worthless in a hurricane with storm surge, unless you have locks along the way, it turns into reverse funnel for water to come rushing upstream. But if you have locks, then you pretty much negate the point of your outlet to the gulf.

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Sh*t.

Maybe open and close the locks with the tide? Damned swamp.

chimpanzee said:

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BQ_90 said:

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I still want an LA river style massive paved ditch with a straight shot from the dam to the bay.

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which is basically worthless in a hurricane with storm surge, unless you have locks along the way, it turns into reverse funnel for water to come rushing upstream. But if you have locks, then you pretty much negate the point of your outlet to the gulf.

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Sh*t.

Maybe open and close the locks with the tide? Damned swamp.

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that's the problem with concrete and runoff, it all has to got south eventually.

But in a hurricane you get the impact of storm surge which basically clogs up all your "drainage".

BQ_90 said:

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chimpanzee said:

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BQ_90 said:

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I still want an LA river style massive paved ditch with a straight shot from the dam to the bay.

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which is basically worthless in a hurricane with storm surge, unless you have locks along the way, it turns into reverse funnel for water to come rushing upstream. But if you have locks, then you pretty much negate the point of your outlet to the gulf.

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Sh*t.

Maybe open and close the locks with the tide? Damned swamp.

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that's the problem with concrete and runoff, it all has to got south eventually.

But in a hurricane you get the impact of storm surge which basically clogs up all your "drainage".

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Same thing already happens, effectively, with the ship channel.

CDUB98 said:

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BQ_90 said:

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chimpanzee said:

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BQ_90 said:

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I still want an LA river style massive paved ditch with a straight shot from the dam to the bay.

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which is basically worthless in a hurricane with storm surge, unless you have locks along the way, it turns into reverse funnel for water to come rushing upstream. But if you have locks, then you pretty much negate the point of your outlet to the gulf.

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Sh*t.

Maybe open and close the locks with the tide? Damned swamp.

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that's the problem with concrete and runoff, it all has to got south eventually.

But in a hurricane you get the impact of storm surge which basically clogs up all your "drainage".

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Same thing already happens, effectively, with the ship channel.

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That why that fantasy plan to build giant underground pipelines to the channel for flood control won't work either

Eh. There is enough positive head I would think to keep flow working. West Houston has to be about 50 feet above MSL.

FHKChE07 said:

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Eh. There is enough positive head I would think to keep flow working. West Houston has to be about 50 feet above MSL.

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Nope. The plan was to build these two tunnels to drain towards the ship channel and be pumped out. The idea was to put there somewhere between 60 and 100 feet below grade, which would put them below MSL. It would have been a gigantic waste of money.

I didn't realize they were going to pump them out. Those are gonna be some big pumps then. Right now, they can release 16,000 cfs. That is basically 7 million GPM. I knew the plan was for twin 27' tunnels. But I didn't realize they were not going to be gravity fed.

Next time we have a drought like 2011-2012, they should dig Lake Houston down to ~5 feet above sea level, install giant gates, do my LA river idea, then flush Sheldon out once a decade. You can't say it doesn't need it.

Fully agree. I laugh at all the dredging up river near kingwood. That is a negligible help to the river system due to bridges acting as damns.


They needed to drain like fully and dig 10-20' out and sell it to fracking companies several hundred miles away. If it took 3 years it would still have been a net positive.

Instead we dug out a river and then placed the spoils...up river.

FHKChE07 said:

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I didn't realize they were going to pump them out. Those are gonna be some big pumps then. Right now, they can release 16,000 cfs. That is basically 7 million GPM. I knew the plan was for twin 27' tunnels. But I didn't realize they were not going to be gravity fed.

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Yeah, but also it was to supplement the drainage, not replace. They were pretty much a reservoir also. In general, it was a system similar to New Orleans levy system.

You can get some pretty massive pumps out there too. Axial flow pumps can put out tremendous amounts. Of course, not 7MM GPM.

evestor1 said:

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Fully agree. I laugh at all the dredging up river near kingwood. That is a negligible help to the river system due to bridges acting as damns.


They needed to drain like fully and dig 10-20' out and sell it to fracking companies several hundred miles away. If it took 3 years it would still have been a net positive.

Instead we dug out a river and then placed the spoils...up river.

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That's been my take living up here with the Lake. The dredging is removing what some storms have put in, but honestly, you need to remove 50+ years of build up.

Lower the levels or dam off part of the lake and dig down. Increase storage capacity of the lake by going deeper without increasing the surface area. Boom, now you have more drinking water and could do some storm water protection. You lower the operating levels a foot or two, but because you went deeper, you have the same original water capacity. If you get a strong storm, you can buffer some of the water (the foot or two you lowered) and release if needed.

I also realize this costs real money, but it is something that has been put off for 50+ years. And since TX will require 90% of all drinking water to come from surface water, you'd better start working on increasing capacity soon.

~egon

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Boom, now you have more drinking water and could do some storm water protection.

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Dude, you're talking insignificant amounts, not to mention all the private property the gov't would confiscate for pennies on the dollar.

Yeah, Egon, to have real flood protection you need something like 75 feet of flood protection and a much bigger surface area. Lake Houston only had a total volume of 160,000 acre ft while Lake Travis has a volume of like 1.3 million + acre ft of flood capacity. Max depth of Lake Houston is 45 feet. Another 10-20 feet isn't really much of anything. It might delay the inevitable by an hour for a non Harvey rain.