HOUSTON, TEXAS – Flooding & Drainage Design – August 28, 2017

I think we might need to talk to architects about widening doorways so that some landscape architects can fit their heads through them. There is 50″ of rain. You can design drainage all you want, but even the rivers can’t drain fast enough. You can’t drain to a place that is already filled with water that is higher than what you are draining.

I am not a Civil Engineer worshipper, but in what world do landscape architects have more drainage education and knowledge than civil engineers?

I don’t know if Civil Engineers failed in Houston or not, but do you really believe that if the drainage design had been turned over to Landscape Architects it would have been better?

REALLY!

Most communities have a Comprehensive Plan that is developed as a big picture of how to shape the community in many ways including physically. That sets the stage for all of the many boards and departments to focus on. Each board and department does their thing, …. each smaller box has to fit in the bigger box. There are a lot of constraints and limitations added on to each smaller box.

You can’t blame a developer for building in an area that is presented as a place to develop. You can’t blame an engineer that has to design his drainage to the budget of the developer who hired him/her and the minimum standards set forth by the city/county/state.

These things are often not as simple as they look.

The biggest problems usually arise from the Comprehensive Plan itself if the community is sensitive to “over regulation”, or if there are high co$ts for things that are invisible to much of the community. Politicians don’t like to be seen  spending billions to on dams when no flood disasters  happened in decades vs. being on TV cutting a ribbon at a new community center and skate park.

This, and the fact that Houston (and Phoenix) is the poster child for urban sprawl may be a result of politicians not wanting to “burden the economy” with regulation. I live in Massachusetts where there is a strong tendency to over regulate, but I also have lived in Idaho where it was the opposite. I did some projects in a county where there was no zoning and no building code – believe me, you don’t want to buy a house there. You have to strike a balance and that balance is going to be different in every community.

Bob, you have never given me the impression that you were for over regulation. Everything is a trade off. Houston may want to allow development of low lands so there is cheaper housing available and someone wants to accept the risk to have low cost housing. Other communities are called snobs because they regulate the cost of housing upward, but the community is safer. You can’t have it both ways. You can only strike a balance that matches the attitude of the community.

You are making my point. It is much more to do with the opportunities developers have to exploit holes in regulations than it is to do with those hired by them to do their design work whether they are landscape architects, civil engineers, or something else.

The development business is, whether we like it or not, very sensitive to controlling costs. It is competitive. They will almost always go to the minimum standards of design and exploit whatever ways they can in going through the regulating bodies. You seldom see trees planted 20′ apart on a commercial project if the minimum requirement is 30′. You won’t see a drainage design for a 50 year event if the standard is a 25 year event.

It is flat out the city regulations that drive everything and it is the community that either lacks participation in the comprehensive planning, or is anti-regulation, or has tasked incompetent people to set those regulations, or has incompetent or agenda driven people overseeing the implementation of those regulations on the regulatory boards or in the field. 

I AM A LAND PLANNER IN HOUSTON AND I HAVE DESIGNED SUBDIVISIONS AND MASTER PLANNED COMMUNITIES IN HOUSTON FOR FIVE YEARS.

WE HAD OVER FIFTY INCHES OF RAIN!!!!!!!WE ARE STILL FIGURING OUT A TON OF THINGS LIKE HOW TO GET TO WORK IN THE MORNING!!!!

I ALSO HAD TO EVACUATE MY APARTMENT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AT 2 AM BECAUSE TWO RESERVOIRS (BOTH OF WHICH WERE DESIGNED DECADES BEFORE I WAS BORN) DECIDED TO BE RELEASED BEHIND MY APARTMENT OF 5 YEARS.  AND YES, I DESIGN DRAINAGE EASEMENTS TOO AS PART OF MY JOB.  DID I PLAN THIS? HELL NO.

I HAD 6 DAYS WITH NO POWER, AND NOW THE LOCAL STREET IN FRONT OF MY APARTMENT IS A MAJOR THOROUGHFARE. I HAVE TO WALK HOME WHICH IS THREE MILES AWAY BECAUSE THE ROADS ARE THAT SCREWED UP. IT WILL TAKE WEEKS TO REPAIR.  THERE IS A LIKELYHOOD OF MOSQUITO INFESTION AND A LOT OF WATERBORNE AND AIRBORNE ILLNESS COMING UP NEXT THAT WE HAVE TO PUT WITH.

SO BEFORE ANY OF YOU JERKS POINT THE FINGER SHOW SOME GODDAM SYMPATHY AND CONCERN FOR YOUR OWN BRETHERN.BECAUSE IT COULD EASILY HAPPENED TO ANY OF YOU!!

ON TOP OF WORK I AM ALSO JUGGLING A CERTIFICATION IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT (PMP) AND I WAS ABLE TO ATTEND BOTH ONLINE CLASSES LAST WEEK AND STAY ON TOP OF HOMEWORK.  IT HAS BEEN VERY HARDTO DEAL WITH WORK, STUDY, AND NOW A HURRICANE RECOVERY.

SHAME ON ALL OF YOU ESPECIALLY THE COCKY OP.  I LOST ALL RESPECT FOR YOU YEARS AGO NOW YOU ARE JUST A GODDAM CANTERKOUS PAIN  IN THE ASS!!!!

Communities today have far more strict detention requirements.  They are designed outside of 500 year floodplains, if not more.  Most of the flooding is occurring in areas within the center of the city in older neighborhoods that are within the 100 year floodplain much of which was designed from the 1950s to the 1980s. The simple solution would be condemning vast tracks of land in the city center and retrofitting the rest with infrastructure including underground detention and cisterns  This is not economically feasible.  It is highly likely that people displaced by this last weeks flood will move out even farther into the outlying suburbs along the Grand Parkway and beyond, making the problems worse.  Tens of thousands of people (myself included) will likely leave entirely before the City even considers moving its development code into zoning.  There is not a history of zoning in place, but there is a likelihood of density and height restrictions on permitted uses. 

Is that better?

Thank you for saying that. 

I do want to emphasize a few other things unique to Houston and its metro area.

1. Streets are designed here to flood.  I never understood this (but I’m a Chicago native where streets are meant to be plowed).  Maybe it’s part of the history of this town that goes back to the 19th century. 

2. The region is flat as a pancake coupled with clay soil, which creates a lot of standing water.

3.  Houston should have never been built where it is located.  It was centered around an oil well near nothing, grew up after a hurricane leveled Galveston, and exploded with the advent of air conditioning.  Even without the air pollution, there is just an untold number of allergens, many of them undocumented, that wreak havoc on native Houstonians.  You would think that after a few decades the locals would have a better resistance or else why would anyone settle in this part of the state. 

4. Remember, Houston (and Texas) provided steady employment to hundreds of thousands of people when many of your own home states were struggling during the recession!  That’s why I’m here because there wasn’t much else for a planner with only a bachelors living up north.  We are still the oil and gas capital for better or worse.  I wouldn’t pick this location for anything, but then again the oil and gas companies aren’t moving anything soon, so here we are.  Steady employment.  I also saw my annual compensation double in 5 years and I made the cut into management as a non-engineer in an engineering firm.  I couldn’t do that even in a healthy time for a much more desirable city. 

Elected and appointed officials guide the vision for their communities.  Whether it is north of you or down along the coast, I’ve never had an impression of any true progressive community implementing any NEW development pattern.  We are conservative in every sense of the word, and that means conventional subdivision design.  It will be business as usual.  There will still be long lines of petitioners asking for deed restrictions and variances at every plan commission in every community.  Heads of flood management district will point the fingers at us developers.  We point the fingers back at them.  And both parties will chuck the climate change variable.  New office parks get built, which bring in more jobs, which brings in more demand for single-family homes, which sprawl out further and further from the city core, making matters worse. 

I don’t think there is a solution.  I’m just offering a forecast from experiencing it first hand.  I don’t have regrets for the work I did.  It’s efficient.  It meets market demands and the sites drain well after major storm events.  It doesn’t violate the health safety or general welfare of the site. 

I see a tiny silver lining (in land use law of all things).  Recently, flooded homeowners filed a class action lawsuit (likely an inverse condemnation) against the Army Corps of Engineers created by the flooding of the Addicks and Barker Reservoirs (which has made national headlines).   An inverse condemnation is a taking (in this case flooding by a drainage district or public agency) but fails to provide just compensation to the private owner under the 5th Amendment.  Due to the enormity of the impacts and property loss,  I wouldn’t be surprised if this takings case goes all the way to the Supreme Court.  For land planning that could set any number of precedents from just compensation to enabling acts for flood control districts.  Just my two cents.