is Metro Rail construction causing Houston's streets and neighborhoods to flood?

This past week, I received an email from a friend that I made through my activism on Metro Rail. The email stated that Houston City Councilwoman Wanda Adams would be holding a public meeting concerning flooding that had occurred in the MacGregor Place subdivision in the aftermath of the rain storms that occurred on Monday, January 9th 2012.

The email was lengthy and quite worrisome. It was clear that the MacGregor Place subdivision had taken a real beating during the January 9th rain storm. Kids had to be taken out of HISD's Peck Elementary school, and the neighboring Kipp Academy charter school by dump trucks because school buses could not make it in and out of the neighborhood. Little did I know that this was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to this local horror disaster.

I got to the meeting just as it was starting. As I was walking up to the local YMCA building where the meeting was held, a friend of mine was giving an interview to a channel 26 Fox News reporter, who was the only media person who covered the event. The Fox News internet video did a pretty good story of covering the meeting, but here are more details.

The meeting was kicked off by CM Adams, who introduced Harris County Precinct 7 Constable Mae Walker, who told the audience that her office has access to 2.5 ton and 5 ton high water vehicles for use in the event of an emergency. Her office also has boats if people are stranded. CM Adams then introduced to the audience representatives from Union Pacific railroad, the City of Houston Public Works and Engineering department (PWE), the Harris County Flood Control District, Metro, and the American Red Cross. CM Stephen Costello, father of the Proposition 1 rain tax, was also in attendance.

Benton Bond, an employee with Union Pacific railroad, was first up to the microphone. Mr. Bond gave a roughly 20 minute presentation on the events of January 9th. Specifically, Union Pacific railroad has for many decades operated a freight rail line that runs generally in a north / south direction, and which almost parallel to Spur 5 near Interstate 45, and runs close to the MacGregor Place subdivision. Mr. Bond thanked the audience for photographs and videos that people had sent in to UPRR and to the other parties, as the photos and videos enabled the parties to construct a timeline of the events of that day.

Mr. Bond told the audience that the Kuhlman gully, which runs in an east / west direction through the subdivision, then turns north towards Braes Bayou after it leaves the subdivision, runs underneath the rail yards. Mr. Bond said that it started drizzling about 6:00am on January 9th, but it started raining very hard at approximately 9:15am.

Mr. Bond told the audience that by 9:30am, Union Pacific had evidence that street flooding had already started. Between 10:00am - 11:00am, floodwaters started entering cars and buildings in the area. By 11:00am, the Kuhlman gully had reached capacity, and at 12:21pm, witnesses spotted a 75 foot long by 18 food wide culvert extension that ran underneath the Union Pacific railroad tracks that had experienced damage. The Royal Palms apartment complex, which is located along Griggs Road, is federal Section 8 housing, and is located right along where Metro is building the light rail line, was extremely hard hit, as can be seen in the Fox News video links above, which showed residents sweeping water out of their first floor units.

Mr. Bond finished up his talk and video presentation by saying that the flood was a 25 year flooding event, that the roads flooded first, then the Kuhlman gully, and he showed a photo of the upended 75' by 18' culvert that was sticking up into the air. Mr. Bond alluded to the photo, noting that the photo had gotten press coverage and had been widely circulated in the community. Mr. Bond stated (as did a spokeswoman for UPRR in the Fox News video) that UPRR had acted to cut the culvert up in order to free it and allow flood waters to drain out.

A professional engineer who was employed with Union Pacific, whose name I didn't catch spoke briefly about the rainstorm itself. He said that 4.28 inches of rain fell between 9:15am - 11:15am, and that 4.81 inches of rain fell between 9:15am - 12:15pm. This engineer told the audience that the flood was a 200 year event, contradicting the earlier statement that the flood was a 25 year event. He said that City of Houston storm sewers were designed for a 2-10 year event in residential areas and 5-10 year events in commercial areas, something I have heard said before. But the engineer stated that construction going on in the neighborhood cut down on storm capacity because water could not get into the street culverts.

Next up on the speakers list was Eric Dargan, an engineer with City of Houston Public Works and Engineering. Mr. Dargan repeated that a 2 year flooding event is considered to be 4 inches of rain within 24 hours. Mr. Dargan told the audience that there were no collapsed or blocked storm sewer lines, contradicting what the previous engineer had said.

Mr. Dargan stepped down, and Curtis Lampley with the Harris County Flood Control District stood to speak before the audience. Mr. Lampley said that the HCFCD was responsible for maintenance of the bayous, but not the storm sewers or the streets of the city. He said that the HCFCD does not issue permits, nor does it do culverts. This was in response to a question of who was responsible for what.

Next up was Metro's Dave Couch, director of capital projects for the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Mr. Couch told the audience that the rainfall overwhelmed the drainage system. All storm sewer lines were in service, and he said that Metro was increasing the capacity of the storm lines. He asserted that ther was no solid runoff into the system. Were all lnlets to the storm sewer system sealed, he was asked? Mr. Couch answered, "no."

A gentleman from the City of Houston emergency management division, whose name I did not get, then came up to speak about the aftermath. He told the audience that information for a federal disaster declaration was being sent to the State of Texas. Someone had enough wits around them to contact the American Red Cross, which did all the heavy lifting in terms of helping residents who were stricken by this disaster, by providing food, medical care, and simple help. Someone there got in touch with St. Francis Xavier Catholic church, whose Priests and congregation threw open its doors and gave shelter to those who were rendered temporarily without shelter.

The floor was open for questions. One person asked whether the flow of water had been diverted from Braes Bayou? The answer was no. The next question, however, fired the crowd up. One person demanded to know whether constructing the Metro rail line had caused the flooding? One of the neighborhood pastors said that he had lived in the neighborhood for 25 years and it had never flooded. Another resident testified that the water had flowed very slowly out of the neighborhood. The rain had stopped around 2:00pm that afternoon, but the water did not drain out until after 4:00am the next morning.

In response to this, Dwight Boykins, who sits on the Rebuild Houston committee, and Houston City Councilman Stephen Costello, who showed up to pimp his new rain tax, got up to speak. Mr. Boykins said that the Rebuild Houston was not ready to start installing new drainage. When asked by what criteria projects would be first worked on, he said that the entire city was being mapped by LIDAR. CM Costello told the audience that the first thing that would be done is to commit to the current five year capital improvement plan (CIP), and he said that projects would be "needs based." Costello told the audience that the Rebuild Houston fund had accumluated $60 million so far and that it was on a path to accumulate $100 million by the end of the year. CM Costello went on to say that "what was amazing about the Renew Houston plan was that we passed a funding source without a plan," to which one woman in the audience replied that that she did not vote for Renew Houston because it was Rescrew Houston.

CM Costello went on to say that a plan for Rebuild Houston would be out on February 10th, and that "needs based" criteria would be based on 311 calls to the city, age of facilities, and traffic counts.

Talk resumed about the flooding that occurred on January 9th. The City of Houston emergency management person came back u to say that the criteria for federal disaster dollars was that 25 or more homes needed to have experienced 50 percent or more damage in terms of value. His team had already received 139 applications from home owners for assistance, far exceeding this rather low criteria, but he also said that apartments also count towards the 50 percent criteria. He went on to say that the Royal Palms apartment complex is uninhabitable and that they were expecting 16 more applications from residents. The Royal Palms apartments were a U.S. HUD based community, but he said that HUD had not given anything to them and that HUD was not financially responsible for the Royal Palms because HUD does not own the Royal Palms apartment complex. Meanwhile, the landlord of the complex was nowhere to be found, something that angered CM Wanda Adams, who had gone looking for the landlord.

HUD had told residents that they had to vacate the complex, and stories were told that food had been stolen from apartment residents. Despite the fact that HUD had told the residents that they had to vacate, HUD had no money for relocation funds. There were some residents who volunteered to relocate to some vacant apartment units up on the northside of Houston, but some people had decided to stay in the Royal Palms. Where else would they go? The emergency management fellow said that regardless of what else they would do, they needed to get their applications for disaster relief in, as they were planning on sending the City's application for federal disaster relief to Governor Perry's office the next day, and that agents from the State would be coming to the area to audit the claims before sending the application to President Obama.

Benton Bond from UPRR got up to address some more questions about the possible role of the damaged culvert in the flooding. He said that the concrete culvert that had risen up had been installed 10 years before, and had been inspected several times since installation. The last inspection was back in March 2011, He told the audience that the company was already in the process of designing a new pipe, but that one thing that was a barrier to a fast installation was that when the old pipe was installed, the City of Houston was very slow in allowing a permit for installing it. Would the City act more quickly this time to abet the reconstruction of the culvert under the UPRR rail line?

Another resident stood up to speak, saying that there had been no flooding in the MacGregor Place subdivision in nearly 50 years, and that he had seen Metro's shielding bags that covered the street gutters saturated with mud. He understood that Mr. Couch had said that they were designed to let water through, but nothing else, but those covers were holding everything back. Eyewitnesses in the neighborhood had seen Metro Rail contractors sweep debris from construction into the storm sewers, to which Mr. Couch said that Metro was responsible for the street inlets.

The meeting ended. Afterwards I spoke with some of the residents. One person said that the University of Houston, which is on the other side of MacGregor Park on MLK, had not flooded during the storm, whereas their neighborhood did, and they wanted to know why? Another woman who identified herself to me as a lawyer said to me that nothing had been said at the meeting, and she was correct. There were a mass of contradictory statements that were made at the meeting, and I told her that the reason why nobody really said anything of substance was not because the investigation was preliminary, but it was because none of the representatives wanted to find themselves on the witness stand a year from now being grilled by her as to who was really at fault for causing the MacGregor Place subdivision to not drain out after a major rain storm, when it had successfully handled Hurricane Alicia back in 1983, Tropical Storm Allison back in 2001, Hurricane Rita in 2006, and Hurricane Ike back in 2008?

I also found out after the meeting that Metro is in the process of condemning a cement and gravel plant that lies just outside the MacGregor Trail subdivision, not far from the Union Pacific rail line. Metro plans to build a rail car barn and maintenance facility at the terminus of the rail line, but the current owners are fighting Metro in court over the condemnation. Did this property in any way possibly contribute to the flooding problem?

The following Saturday, I went to a gathering of bloggers and was told that there had been extensive ponding of water along Harrisburg, where Metro has started building a light rail line, and that one downtown parking garage along Metro's rail line (Metro has dug up the streets of Rusk and Capitol) had also experienced flooding. There is more rain expected this week, which will allow for capturing of more evidence of whether or not Metro's construction is causing flooding along the streets. It also occurred to me to revisit the federally mandated environmental impact statements that Metro had to produce in order to secure federal grant funding to see what Metro and the FTA said about flooding. If those EIS studies didn't show anything about flooding, all that goes to show is that the EIS process is nothing more than a phony dog and pony show to keep people employed, rig the process to ensure the outcome that the transit agency desires (which was to build rail), and for environmental groups to use to stop road construction.

This whole episode reminds me of part of the reason why I started blogging in the first place: Because the Houston Chronicle and other news outlets decide what's news and what isn't, and Chris Moran's higher ups decided that Helena Brown's okay to sell an 8,840 square foot parcel of land that pissed off some of the neighborhood folks who couldn't be bothered to cough up their own money to buy that land was news, while the flooding out of an subdivision, possibly caused by Metro's construction of a rail line wasn't. One resident said on television that all they wanted was not to be treated like animals, and ladies and gentlemen, treating people like animals is not acceptable.

Wizard .

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