Heaps of Harvey debris pulled from Lake Houston
Effort to increase reservoir storage capacity, stave off future floods gains urgency after recent rains
Nearly 50,000 cubic yards of debris have been removed from Lake Houston in the last two months, about one-third of the waste lodged in the waterway after Hurricane Harvey, officials said.
Between 1,000 and 2,000 cubic yards of debris — or an amount that could fill 50 dumpsters — have been removed per day since May, and up to 150,000 cubic yards could be dredged by the end of the project, Mayor Sylvester Turner said Friday in Huffman after a boat tour of the city-owned reservoir.
The debris removal at the northeast Houston lake could cost between $8 million and $20 million, depending on the amount of material collected. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will pay 90 percent of the cost, with the other 10 percent coming from the city of Houston.
The effort to raise storage capacity in the lake began in mid-May and is expected to last three to five more months, Turner said.
“We anticipate that there’s a lot more out there,” the mayor said. “This is a regional sort of issue, and we’re all tackling it and we have to operate with the greatest sense of urgency.
“If there was any, any need of a reminder, we got a reminder on July the Fourth,” he said.
Parts of Harris County received up to 7 inches of rain on the Wednesday holiday, triggering worries among residents still struggling to regain normalcy after the August 2017 storm.
In the Lake Houston
area, authorities estimated that 16,000 homes and 3,300 businesses were damaged by Harvey’s flood.
“Every time it rains, people in this area are worried about the capacity of the lake and additional water coming into our lake and flooding our homes,” said Houston City Councilman Dave Martin, who represents the District E Kingwood area. “We can never let that happen again.”
Many post-Harvey efforts from residents in Kingwood and other communities adjacent to Lake Houston have focused on removing the sediment and debris that has lowered storage capacity by as much as 30 percent in the reservoir the past several years. The reservoir was completed by the city in 1953.
Harvey accelerated that, with trash, logs, vegetation and even parts of houses filling the lake, Turner said.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have determined the debris is from the storm, using a scientific aging process that can tell how long debris has been in the water, said Harry Hayes, director of Houston’s Solid Waste Management Department.
Continued funding in the Legislature is important, however, in the completion of more flood prevention projects, including further maintenance of the lake, said state Rep. Dan Huberty, of Kingwood, who also joined in the boat tour.
“That’s going to be critical for us during these times,” Huberty said after the boat tour. “We’ve got tons of inlands, that if you drive around here in Atascocita, they’re all filled with debris, silt and sediment that’s built over the years. It’s not just Kingwood. It’s Huffman. It’s the Crosby area. It’s everything that touches the lake.”
Houston’s solid waste department is conducting the clean-up effort through a contract with DRC Emergency Services, which is working from several barges to remove the debris.
Turner and several other city and state officials witnessed some of the efforts firsthand on the Friday boat tour, which took off from a marina in Huffman.
On the water, Turner and others saw at least two barges piled
“Every time it rains, people in this area are worried about the capacity of the lake and additional water coming into our lake and flooding our homes.” Dave Martin, Houston city councilman
with debris, including large logs and siding from homes. Plastic water bottles also floated around them on the surface of the lake.
Turner said it is imperative that the lake continues to be maintained to prevent flooding risks.
“If you don’t do the maintenance then you’re going to chip away at your capacity, create a safety risk and then you have a huge problem,” Turner said. “When you think of Hurricane Rita, Ike and now Harvey, all of that stuff kind of comes into this lake. And what ends up happening? Where does the water go? The water goes up and into people’s homes causing a lot of structural damage.”