Engineers warned of flooding

Associated Press

DALLAS

A report released two decades ago on the Harris County reservoir system predicted with alarming accuracy the catastrophic flooding that would besiege the Houston area if changes weren’t made in the face of rapid development.

The report released in 1996 by engineers with the Harris County Flood Control District said the Addicks and Barker reservoirs were adequate when built in the 1940s. But it noted that as entire neighborhoods sprouted over the years around the reservoirs in western Harris County, as many as 25,000 homes and businesses at the time were exposed to the kind of flooding Harvey has now brought.

In the report obtained by The Dallas Morning News, engineers proposed a $400 million solution that involved building a massive underground conduit that would more quickly carry water out of the reservoirs and into the Houston Ship Channel. The conceptual plan envisioned a conduit consisting of eight channels to carry water out of the reservoirs and safely past developed areas downstream.

“The primary flood threat facing the citizens of west Harris County and west Houston comes from the inability to drain the Addicks and Barker reservoirs in an efficient manner,” the report said.

When asked about the report, Harris County flood control officials said they could not immediately locate a copy and were unfamiliar with the details.

“What I recall is– and I haven’t read the report since back then – was that it was going to be very difficult to do physically,” said Steve Fitzgerald, the flood control district’s longtime chief engineer.

But the timing in 1996 was right, the engineers noted. The Texas Department of Transportation was launching a reconstruction of the Katy Freeway, a portion of Interstate 10 west of downtown Houston that leads directly from the two reservoirs to the downtown section, and it would have been a suitable route for the drainage channel, they said

Other solutions were offered, such as digging the reservoirs deeper, buying out properties at risk of flooding and imposing new regulations on development.

“Do nothing and accept risk of flooding,” the report warned.

The report was filed away without action, then last week Harvey struck.