As reported in the December '05 issue of the Banner, TxDOT held a public meeting on November 29, 2005 concerning its proposed construction of retention ponds along the IH-10/White Oak Bayou area. The purpose of the ponds is to mitigate flood damage along the IH-10 corridor where it crosses White Oak Bayou near downtown.  During Tropical Storm Allison much of that area was submerged by floodwaters from the bayou.  TxDOT's plan is to build ponds that will hold the overflow from the bayou and prevent the kind of flooding that occurred in the past.  At the time of the meeting four recommended pond sites were represented on an aerial view map. Three of the ponds were located along White Oak Bayou between Yale St. and Shepherd Dr. The fourth was located in a triangular shaped area bordered by T.C. Jester, White Oak Bayou and the old Eureka rail corridor.

   Another public meeting on the retention ponds was conducted by TxDOT on June 8, 2006 at Sinclair Elementary. The purpose of this meeting was to again present the proposed action to the public, and to give a project update. New maps indicate only one major change to the original pond sites. A smaller site north of the bayou and closest to Yale St. had been enlarged to include an area up to 7th St. It appears that most of this area is vacant land and industrial warehouses as the outline of the pond seems to avoid a row of homes on Rutland St. The TxDOT representative said it was probable that the only homes involved in the pond rights of way would be the area along IH-10 and Kolb St. But a proposed site that borders Patterson St. across from the City of Houston Traffic Center also has a few homes. The T.C. Jester site is vacant land owned by a developer. So it seems TxDOT will have to take limited residential property in constructing the ponds.

   During discussions at the meeting the TxDOT engineer explained that all the proposed rentention  ponds were designed to protect the IH-10 freeway area from flooding. Some residents from Timbergrove asked what was being done to protect the homes north of W.11th St., some of which were flooded in Allison. They were told that the Harris County Flood Control District has built a series of nine retention ponds with two still in construction along the White Oak Bayou watershed north of the 610 Loop. These ponds, he said, are part of a flood damage reduction project that is designed to prevent the kind of overflow that occurred downstream in the inner loop neighborhoods along White Oak Bayou during Allison.

   The White Oak Bayou Federal Flood Damage Reduction Project is a joint project of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Harris County Flood Control District. This plan was actually begun in 1998 when Congress made federal funds available under the Water Resources Development Act. Prior to that Harris County had adopted a regional flood control plan in 1984 that was supposed to reduce existing flood levels so that new development could continue without increasing flooding. The county's attempts at controlling flooding apparently did not keep up with the pace of development in the watershed, and White Oak Bayou continued to flood.  The current project was in its early phases when Tropical Storm Allison hit the Houston area in 2001 and many  flood mitigation improvements had not been started. Presently much of the mitigation activity is taking place in the upper portion of the White Oak Bayou watershed between the Jersey Village and North Houston-Rosslyn areas. In addition to the retention ponds the county has also begun channel modifications and other structural improvements to reduce the risk of  flooding all along the bayou.  

(Near Northwest Banner, June/July 2006)