- lisaannettestanley
Saving the Bayou City Proposed Solution
UPDATE: On This Day: August 27, 2017. So many of our public parks & green areas in the heart of the Downtown Metropolitan Houston area along Memorial Drive & Allen Parkway line the banks of Buffalo Bayou.
The site of our biggest City-wide celebrations: Fourth of July, the Art Car Parade, Thanksgiving Parade & on & on & on has seen some of the worst of the worst flooding during Hurricane Harvey.
Major corporations leading into the heart of Houston’s Business District, including our own Channel 11 studios: submerged.
The green area in this inundation map highlights Memorial Park showing before & after water levels of Buffalo Bayou. The map doesn’t show where Buffalo Bayou ends, but I can tell you it goes wayyyyy out West past Piney Point Village (behind where I now live) down the I-10 Corridor on the Katy Freeway atleast as far as Town & Country. (maybe farther)
Piney Point Village – three streets behind where I live now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YiMnO3EC7U
Map of Buffalo Bayou Flood District:
https://www.hcfcd.org/media/2302/buffalobayou_inundationscenarios0830.pdf
This picture of my children & I in 1996 when my son was born, clearly shows my fishing pier & bulkhead I built from scratch in Dickinson, Texas.
Dickinson Coverage of Hurricane Harvey, Day One:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8DtTwXBcwQ
Senior Citizens Nursing Home Viral Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4gdD_stUGE
These images clearly show the extent of the devastation across the entire region.
I am not a Civil Engineer or an engineer of any kind but I do have a proposal going forward on a possible solution to our chronic flooding in Memorial Park & the entire Metropolitan Area. (No Hurricane required: Memorial Park floods in a heavy drizzle.)
When we built our fishing pier, we had to get a building permit from the Army Corps of Engineers in the Texas General Land Office, who owns all public waterways.
In general dredging of coastal waterways is discouraged to limit the environmental impact on fish, birds & wildlife.
In my opinion, it is time to put people first. The wildlife should bounce back.
We need to dredge, deepen & widen Buffalo Bayou from Downtown, through Memorial Park out to the Katy Freeway to act as a retention pond.
Sounds like a good idea to me.