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I grew up in this area. I can confirm it’s not common knowledge how these dams work. I learned a lot seeing Harvey. Everyone does know the dams are there. But

I grew up in this area. I can confirm it’s not common knowledge how these dams work. I learned a lot seeing Harvey. Everyone does know the dams are there. But in an otherwise flat city they are just big mounds of dirt running for miles. They don’t hold water most of the time. Even with heavy rain any minor flooding goes away in a couple days. I never really understood why a 20-50 foot tall dam was needed. I remember once joking with a friend that if the water ever filled up over the dam that means the entire state of Texas behind the dams is under water. It actually did not make sense to me why they built the dams so big until Harvey. In any case, someone knew and should have been a required disclosure when buying a home. However, I don’t think it would have helped. People would have bought there anyway because this kind of flooding was unthinkable. Although they would have known they needed flood insurance. But then, insurance companies probably wouldn’t offer it.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
math_and_stuff 9y ago
I grew up in Bear Creek (and went to school at Mayde Creek) and didn't know either.
- cat199 9y ago
  htx here too.. But growing up in the area did either of you really think that a flood was not possible? floodplain or not, after seeing 1 rainstorm here it should be clear to anyone that flooding can happen if you're under the wrong cloud at the wrong time..
  - math_and_stuff 9y ago
    I wasn't a home buyer and am pretty sure I would have done this research if I had been. But, the point is that people that grew up here didn't have this as common knowledge; in hindsight, yes, but it's almost beyond the pale that the city would knowingly allow homes to be built in a known flood zone.
    - dboreham 9y ago
      Pretty good pun, assuming you know the meaning of "pale" :)
  - conductr 9y ago
    Yes. But no one knew they would intentionally flood this area as a plan to save the inner city. In hindsight makes total sense they would and that it was designed just that way.
- ryanmarsh 9y ago
  Class of ‘97, wbu?
nerdponx 9y ago
It's incredible that the city, or for that matter the Army Corps of Engineers, allowed anyone to build homes there. "Totally irresponsible and reckless" would be my most favorable assessment.
- InitialLastName 9y ago
  More than that, Americans as a society FUND them to build homes there (through mortgage interest subsidies), and then FUND them to rebuild there when it inevitably floods (through under-priced federal flood insurance).
- brenschluss 9y ago
  The Army Corps couldn't help: >Long added that the Army Corps doesn’t have the power to control development on land the agency doesn’t own. >“That would require the act of politicians, and they’ve chosen not to do it,” Long said.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    The Army Corps should buy up as much of the land possible around the resouivor while the prices are depressed to prevent future development on it. EDIT: My comment assumes that they would acquire additional funding to do this, as they are the best agency to acquire and hold the land to prevent future development (vs a traditional land trust for conservancy).
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - zaroth 9y ago
      TFA says they bought 24,000 acres for about $170 / acre (today's dollars) in the 40s. The surrounding 8,000 acres in fact is perfectly buildable with the right codes in place.
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
S_A_P 9y ago
I also grew up in and still live near this area. I’ve seen the Barker Reservoir flood at least half a dozen times. When I first moved to Katy it didn’t cause much of a problem. It didn’t have a through road and only had a gun range in it. It is definitely insane to me that more study isn’t done as Houston and it’s suburban areas grow. Katy now effectively bleeds from west Houston to the next small town west(Fulshear) with all of that prairie and old rice land now covered by homes and businesses. My parents live on the far west side of Katy and their street didn’t even flood. My fathers rain gauge measured 38” of rain fall the weekend of Harvey. Something needs to be done to rectify the flooding in Houston. That said I’ve a friend who now has been flooded 3 times in three years. He lives near Addicks Reservoir in bear creek. You have to stop rebuilding at some point.
- mcguire 9y ago
  "It is definitely insane to me that more study isn’t done as Houston and it’s suburban areas grow." More study has been done, according to the article, but it's hard politically to tell people that they cannot build any more in the 500 sq. mi. drainage basin, again, according to the article.
- seandhi 9y ago
  I grew up between Highway 6 and Eldridge on West Little York. Those two reservoirs flooded both of those roads more times than I can count between I-10 and Clay Rd and Highway 6 south of I-10. I don't know how anyone who has lived in Houston for more than a few years does not know that by now. That said, through the worst of floods, my childhood home never flooded. Harvey flooded it.
  - conductr 9y ago
    Yep sounds like what I witnessed. I didn’t mean to come off like I never saw flooding. Mostly roads, ditches and park floods. Which I didn’t see as much a risk as rarely a home would flood (to my knowledge). It was more just an inconvenience of living in that area. Again I didn’t understand the need of 20 ft mounds. The juxtaposition of all the development behind the dam and the heaviest of rains (pre Harvey) not creating much flooding in a relative sense is what never made sense to me.
loeg 9y ago
> People would have bought there anyway because this kind of flooding was unthinkable Exactly. These people did, and now they are eager to claim they never knew it was possible. And of course real estate agents and developers want as little responsibility on them as possible, too. So suddenly no one knows anything. I think if you had run the same query by the same group before Harvey, you would have gotten more affirmative responses. This is exactly why regulation that limits development for safety (flood plains, electric code, fire safety) is good for most homeowners (who will make short-sighted or optimistic risk evaluations) despite displacing a few on the margin into worse housing situations.
- taysic 9y ago
  You don't even need regulation. You just need a private market of flood insurance that will be naturally prohibitive where the risk is high. The problem with leaving it up to regulation is that there are too many interested parties in seeing their area does not get marked as high risk. This encourages to FEMA to leave maps out of date to avoid a public outcry. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-fema-faulty-flood-maps/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-fema-faulty-flood-ma...
  - Dowwie 9y ago
    Does this story lead to evidence that Lenders were unaware of the Houston flood zone due to out of date flood maps?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - loeg 9y ago
    You know, I had a similar idea. I have two concerns with that approach. One, the combined cost may not be reflected in the "sticker" price, and people may have some difficulty estimating a combined cost. I think this happens with cars, but may be mistaken. People look at the sticker price and maybe ignore the cost of insurance until they take it home? Maybe that's just a figment of my imagination, though. My other concern is that insurers may not appropriately price in the cost of insuring a flood area. Of course, people will flock to the lowest price insurer. Then a 100- or 1000-year flood rolls around, like Harvey, and the insurer goes bankrupt and people still lose their homes and money. This can be mitigated by insuring the flood zone insurers, or something like that, but doesn't that still amount to flood zone regulation regulation? Re: marking areas as "high risk" and not — obviously a binary distinction is a poor fit and some sort of gradient scale would be more appropriate.
ZoeZoeBee 9y ago
(May 31, 2016) The trouble with living in a swamp: Houston floods explained >The worst rain the city remembered fell in 1929, and a worse one struck in 1935. Buffalo Bayou rose up to the second story in parts of downtown. Buildings collapsed. Swaths of city were destroyed. >Talbott has a simple solution: allocate $26 billion, more than a fifth of the state's 2015 budget, mostly to buy property adjacent to the waterways, bulldoze and expand the canals. That amount of money, he said, could get all of Houston prepared to weather a city-wide, once-in-a-century storm. http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/explainer/article/The-trouble-with-living-in-a-swamp-Houston-7954514.php http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/explainer/article/The-...
a3n 9y ago
If it had been a required disclosure, people would have been required to sign one more paper that they didn't read at closing, while the title agent said "... and this ... drone ... but that's not gonna happen ..."
ryanmarsh 9y ago
in an otherwise flat city they are just big mounds of dirt running for miles Same. As a child I couldn’t figure out why we had these big berms and called them a damn. Turns out the terrain slopes so gently (1 ft./mi.) that you can’t even tell

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

math_and_stuff 9y ago

I grew up in Bear Creek (and went to school at Mayde Creek) and didn't know either.

cat199 9y ago
htx here too.. But growing up in the area did either of you really think that a flood was not possible? floodplain or not, after seeing 1 rainstorm here it should be clear to anyone that flooding can happen if you're under the wrong cloud at the wrong time..
- math_and_stuff 9y ago
  I wasn't a home buyer and am pretty sure I would have done this research if I had been. But, the point is that people that grew up here didn't have this as common knowledge; in hindsight, yes, but it's almost beyond the pale that the city would knowingly allow homes to be built in a known flood zone.
  - dboreham 9y ago
    Pretty good pun, assuming you know the meaning of "pale" :)
- conductr 9y ago
  Yes. But no one knew they would intentionally flood this area as a plan to save the inner city. In hindsight makes total sense they would and that it was designed just that way.
ryanmarsh 9y ago
Class of ‘97, wbu?

nerdponx 9y ago

It's incredible that the city, or for that matter the Army Corps of Engineers, allowed anyone to build homes there. "Totally irresponsible and reckless" would be my most favorable assessment.

InitialLastName 9y ago
More than that, Americans as a society FUND them to build homes there (through mortgage interest subsidies), and then FUND them to rebuild there when it inevitably floods (through under-priced federal flood insurance).
brenschluss 9y ago
The Army Corps couldn't help: >Long added that the Army Corps doesn’t have the power to control development on land the agency doesn’t own. >“That would require the act of politicians, and they’ve chosen not to do it,” Long said.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  The Army Corps should buy up as much of the land possible around the resouivor while the prices are depressed to prevent future development on it. EDIT: My comment assumes that they would acquire additional funding to do this, as they are the best agency to acquire and hold the land to prevent future development (vs a traditional land trust for conservancy).
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - zaroth 9y ago
    TFA says they bought 24,000 acres for about $170 / acre (today's dollars) in the 40s. The surrounding 8,000 acres in fact is perfectly buildable with the right codes in place.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago

S_A_P 9y ago

I also grew up in and still live near this area. I’ve seen the Barker Reservoir flood at least half a dozen times. When I first moved to Katy it didn’t cause much of a problem. It didn’t have a through road and only had a gun range in it. It is definitely insane to me that more study isn’t done as Houston and it’s suburban areas grow. Katy now effectively bleeds from west Houston to the next small town west(Fulshear) with all of that prairie and old rice land now covered by homes and businesses. My parents live on the far west side of Katy and their street didn’t even flood. My fathers rain gauge measured 38” of rain fall the weekend of Harvey. Something needs to be done to rectify the flooding in Houston. That said I’ve a friend who now has been flooded 3 times in three years. He lives near Addicks Reservoir in bear creek. You have to stop rebuilding at some point.

mcguire 9y ago
"It is definitely insane to me that more study isn’t done as Houston and it’s suburban areas grow." More study has been done, according to the article, but it's hard politically to tell people that they cannot build any more in the 500 sq. mi. drainage basin, again, according to the article.
seandhi 9y ago
I grew up between Highway 6 and Eldridge on West Little York. Those two reservoirs flooded both of those roads more times than I can count between I-10 and Clay Rd and Highway 6 south of I-10. I don't know how anyone who has lived in Houston for more than a few years does not know that by now. That said, through the worst of floods, my childhood home never flooded. Harvey flooded it.
- conductr 9y ago
  Yep sounds like what I witnessed. I didn’t mean to come off like I never saw flooding. Mostly roads, ditches and park floods. Which I didn’t see as much a risk as rarely a home would flood (to my knowledge). It was more just an inconvenience of living in that area. Again I didn’t understand the need of 20 ft mounds. The juxtaposition of all the development behind the dam and the heaviest of rains (pre Harvey) not creating much flooding in a relative sense is what never made sense to me.

loeg 9y ago

> People would have bought there anyway because this kind of flooding was unthinkable Exactly. These people did, and now they are eager to claim they never knew it was possible. And of course real estate agents and developers want as little responsibility on them as possible, too. So suddenly no one knows anything. I think if you had run the same query by the same group before Harvey, you would have gotten more affirmative responses. This is exactly why regulation that limits development for safety (flood plains, electric code, fire safety) is good for most homeowners (who will make short-sighted or optimistic risk evaluations) despite displacing a few on the margin into worse housing situations.

taysic 9y ago
You don't even need regulation. You just need a private market of flood insurance that will be naturally prohibitive where the risk is high. The problem with leaving it up to regulation is that there are too many interested parties in seeing their area does not get marked as high risk. This encourages to FEMA to leave maps out of date to avoid a public outcry. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-fema-faulty-flood-maps/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-fema-faulty-flood-ma...
- Dowwie 9y ago
  Does this story lead to evidence that Lenders were unaware of the Houston flood zone due to out of date flood maps?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- loeg 9y ago
  You know, I had a similar idea. I have two concerns with that approach. One, the combined cost may not be reflected in the "sticker" price, and people may have some difficulty estimating a combined cost. I think this happens with cars, but may be mistaken. People look at the sticker price and maybe ignore the cost of insurance until they take it home? Maybe that's just a figment of my imagination, though. My other concern is that insurers may not appropriately price in the cost of insuring a flood area. Of course, people will flock to the lowest price insurer. Then a 100- or 1000-year flood rolls around, like Harvey, and the insurer goes bankrupt and people still lose their homes and money. This can be mitigated by insuring the flood zone insurers, or something like that, but doesn't that still amount to flood zone regulation regulation? Re: marking areas as "high risk" and not — obviously a binary distinction is a poor fit and some sort of gradient scale would be more appropriate.

ZoeZoeBee 9y ago

(May 31, 2016) The trouble with living in a swamp: Houston floods explained >The worst rain the city remembered fell in 1929, and a worse one struck in 1935. Buffalo Bayou rose up to the second story in parts of downtown. Buildings collapsed. Swaths of city were destroyed. >Talbott has a simple solution: allocate $26 billion, more than a fifth of the state's 2015 budget, mostly to buy property adjacent to the waterways, bulldoze and expand the canals. That amount of money, he said, could get all of Houston prepared to weather a city-wide, once-in-a-century storm. http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/explainer/article/The-trouble-with-living-in-a-swamp-Houston-7954514.php http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/explainer/article/The-...

a3n 9y ago

If it had been a required disclosure, people would have been required to sign one more paper that they didn't read at closing, while the title agent said "... and this ... drone ... but that's not gonna happen ..."

ryanmarsh 9y ago

in an otherwise flat city they are just big mounds of dirt running for miles Same. As a child I couldn’t figure out why we had these big berms and called them a damn. Turns out the terrain slopes so gently (1 ft./mi.) that you can’t even tell