Out of Control

Mary Abshier, president of the Clark Pines Civic Club, estimates that more than 80 of the 90 homes in her tiny subdivision, just east of White Oak Bayou, suffered major flood damage in June, including her own. Fearful of the new development along White Oak Bayou, many residents are opting to get out while they can, she says, and have added their names to the list of thousands hoping for a buyout by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "It's disturbing," she says. "I never had to flee for my safety before."

Unlike most people, who may sense the proximity of disaster but tend to be shocked when it arrives, Fred Lazare expected his house to flood one day.

That didn't make it easier for him to wade through the living room at 3 a.m. with two children in his arms; to clean up the mess and tote up the loss; to deal with insurance agents and contractors and the task of rebuilding his family's sense that all is well. But it did explain the nocturnal visions he'd been experiencing, which in June became premonitions.

"I stood up at a District A town hall meeting about a year ago and said I'd had a dream that there was water in my house," Lazare says. "So, no, I wasn't really surprised."

Three years ago, the White Oak Bayou Association -- Lazare is the group's president -- wanted the city and county to pool their money and build storm-water detention ponds along a stretch of the bayou between Interstate 10 and Loop 610. The association, with the help of local civic clubs and residents from the surrounding neighborhoods, had found several tracts of vacant land that could be purchased for excavation: 180 acres along the old Katy rail corridor; 37 acres owned by Texas Crushed Stone Company, south of 11th Street; and an extinct 20-acre oil and gas field, south of 18th Street.

No sooner had the association completed its survey when a case study in the flood control benefits of storm-water detention presented itself. Tropical Storm Frances thrashed White Oak Bayou's 25-mile length, flooding 1,200 homes from Jersey Village to Arbor Oaks. But damages were considerably less east of Antoine Road, notably downstream of two detention basins built by the flood control district. Further along, toward downtown, the bayou had gone over the bank again, threatening a half-dozen subdivisions, including Fred Lazare's, Timbergrove Manor. Fortunately, Lazare and his neighbors were spared the worst of Frances when the floodwaters found refuge along the rail corridor, in the gravel yard and at the old oil patch.

County flood control officials attributed the high water levels in the area to the heavy rainfalls, which, of course, seemed to go without saying. A month later, the weather lost some weight as the definitive cause when FEMA released a draft version of the new flood-insurance rate map for White Oak Bayou.

The last time anyone checked, in the mid-1980s, the capacity of the White Oak channel from downtown to Cole Creek was more than adequate to handle a 100-year storm, or about 12 and a half inches of rain in 24 hours. In other words, there was no theoretical floodplain. But the draft map released in October 1998 told a different story: The floodplain extended as much as 3,000 feet on the east side of the bayou below 28th Street and on the west side south of 11th Street, encompassing neighborhoods that had never flooded.

Just as Tropical Storm Frances demonstrated the utility of storm-water detention, the draft floodplain map underscored how vulnerable older, inner-city neighborhoods like Timbergrove Manor and Clark Pines were without it. But before the flood control district could fully evaluate the White Oak association's detention plan, city planners proposed extending East T.C. Jester to Ella Boulevard, which would encourage the development of nearly 100 acres in the floodplain.

Opposition from nearby residents was fierce and focused on Greg Baxter, the road's major beneficiary, who had purchased the old oil field site south of 18th Street. Baxter appeared to have stumbled into some bad luck: Just two months before council took up the road extension, local drainage officials were notified of pending revisions to the floodplain for White Oak Bayou, and Baxter's land, which was under water during Tropical Storm Frances, was in the heart of it.

The flood control district immediately began using the new map delineations in its regulation of development in unincorporated areas of the county. As a condition for funding from the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control projects in the White Oak watershed, the district's engineers have the authority to review plans that affect the bayou inside the city limits.