When the banks of Halls Bayou collapsed in the 2017 Hurricane Harvey floodwaters, six of Billy Guevara’s family members drowned, trapped in a van trying to outrun the storm. Guevara’s home in northeast Houston and his mother’s next door were among more than 100,000 structures that flooded.
Guevara, who is blind and has trouble breathing without assistance, has been steadfast in his efforts since then to support the costly flood mitigation projects that might reduce future devastating damages.
He and about 130,000 other Harris County residents voted for a $2.5 billion bond issue in 2018 that aimed to harden the county’s infrastructure following Harvey, which caused more than 100 deaths and racked up $126 billion in damages.
Seven years later, 137 of 181 approved projects are in progress across Harris County, but it’s hard to get a straight answer on what those projects are, how they were selected, and what stage of completion they’re in.
And it’s actually hard to even get a straight answer on whether the “projects” that county officials refer to are simply line items on a spreadsheet that’s never been presented publicly. Commissioners clarified last week that there are 181 so-called “bond IDs,” which represent categories, and about 400 projects within those categories. For example, the Greens Bayou bond ID might include 10 different projects.
That tracks with what the Harris County Flood Control District Chief External Affairs Officer Emily Woodell said in a recent interview with the Houston Press: they’ve completed 200 projects from the 2018 bond and about 200 remain.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, there’s no way for a member of the public, or even an elected county commissioner, to get a simple snapshot of what’s been done and what’s to come on the multi-layered Harris County Flood Control District website. Every project has its own webpage, and there’s a 2018 bond program page, but residents and commissioners say they want a user-friendly dashboard and project tracker.
“We’re trying our level best to make this information available, but we always know there’s a better way to do it,” Woodell said. “Our goal, and part of what I’m working on with our mapping team now, is how to display that in a way that makes sense, how to synthesize it.
“I’m fully aware that every person does not want every detail about a project,” she added. You can go to the project page if you want that. How we can do a one-stop shop for the [bond] program is what we’re working on now.”
It was widely reported last month that 43 bond IDs have been completed, but price tags have gone up since the bond was approved, and now an estimated $1.3 billion shortfall exists, leaving commissioners to spar over which projects should be completed with the remaining dollars.
That’s not entirely true, Woodell says in a July 15 note published on the flood control district’s website.
“There have also been misleading and inaccurate reports suggesting a $1.3 billion funding shortfall within the 2018 Bond Program,” Woodell writes. “In fact, this figure emerged from preliminary discussions initiated by Commissioners Court, following a directive issued on February 27 to assess the status of the program. Over the course of 2.5 months, Flood Control District staff held regular meetings with court offices to share data, respond to questions, and support strategic planning efforts across Harris County.
“As part of those discussions, we were asked to identify estimated funding needs for potential future phases of Bond Program projects, even when those phases extend beyond the original scope approved by voters in 2018. These early estimates were based on preliminary data from engineering studies, grant applications, and planning documents. This information is exploratory in nature and will require further refinement and validation over the next few months.
“It is important to emphasize that our work to secure funding to date, including over $2.7 billion in partnerships, fully meets the original intent and funding commitments of the 2018 Bond Program.”
Residents and commissioners have repeatedly asked for streamlined information on project rankings and status updates. What they get instead are piecemeal reports.
For example, a July 2024 update showed that several projects approved in the 2018 bond have been completed, including design and construction of the South Shaver Stormwater Detention Basin (Sims Bayou watershed); right-of-way, design and construction of channel conveyance improvements on the Halls Bayou watershed; and design and construction of the Cutten Road Stormwater Detention Basin improvements (Greens Bayou watershed).
That doesn’t mean the comprehensive data doesn’t exist, flood control district officials say. Harris County Flood Control District Director Tina Petersen said last month that her office has “very strong systems where all of this information is available.”
“The challenge is getting it into a format that is digestible,” she said. “Having a database is one thing; getting it into a spreadsheet that we can understand can be challenging.”
Officials with the flood control district agreed to present their data, outlining each approved project and its status, cost and priority ranking at a September 18 meeting. A public dashboard with a detailed project tracker is also due to the court by September, per County Judge Lina Hidalgo.
The Harris County Flood Control District is governed by Commissioners Court, which hires the executive director. Petersen was appointed in January 2022, seven months after previous director Russ Poppe resigned.
Prioritization Framework
Adding to the confusion is a debate over how the projects are being prioritized. Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis, the only current member of Commissioners Court who was in office when the bonds were approved in 2018, maintains that it appears an approved “equity framework” mandating that historically underserved areas should be given priority, has not been followed.
Woodell and Petersen say the framework has been followed it to the best of their abilities. Neighborhoods that have been historically underserved are “part of the prioritization framework discussion,” Woodell said.
“We certainly acknowledge that investment has looked different throughout time,” she said. “The bond program has really benefited underserved communities, places where there’s low-to-moderate income populations and watersheds where there’s historically a really high need. We’ve been incredibly successful with grants as well as local dollars in those areas.”
But the program was set up to benefit everyone in Harris County, she added.
“This bond program was in response to Hurricane Harvey,” Woodell said. “When the bond program was set up, it was concentrated on the areas that were hit hardest by Harvey and frankly, there are a lot of those across the county.
“That is why the bond program is so geographically diverse. Had this not been a direct response to that flood event, it might look different. We have to stay true to that. There’s something there that the voters intended and approved that’s really important for us to keep in mind.”
Residents in Harris County’s low-income neighborhoods, traditionally composed of Black and Latino residents, are demanding transparency. Guevara stood before Commissioners Court last month, repeating a refrain they’ve heard before: “Address the worst first.”
The Houston native was joined by about two dozen other Harris County residents at the June 26 meeting, some of whom said they were promised when they voted for the bond that the projects would be distributed equitably, with priority given to vulnerable communities that have been hit the hardest.
“We are tired of flooding,” said northeast Houston resident Doris Brown. “The bond we voted for in 2018 requires equity. When this court discussed the bond, you promised the prioritization system would be followed to help flood-prone communities. We, the voters of Harris County, trusted you.”
The approved bond language that appeared on the 2018 ballot says, “Since flooding issues do not respect jurisdictional or political boundaries, the Commissioners Court shall provide a process for the equitable expenditure of funds, recognizing that project selection may have been affected in the past and may continue to be affected by eligibility requirements for matching federal, state, and other local government funds.”
Ellis maintains that, based on the ballot language, voters approved an “equity framework.” Woodell says the prioritization framework was adopted by Commissioners Court in 2019 and later updated by the Harris County Community Flood Resilience Task Force, of which Guevara is a member, in 2022. Therefore, she says, it was not approved by voters, but the importance of the framework has never been in question.
Precinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey, the court’s lone Republican, and Ellis have debated the framework in an often-contentious fashion. Ellis says wealthy neighborhoods are throwing out buzzwords like “shovel-ready” and “partnerships” so they can go to the top of the list, but wealthier communities tend to have more infrastructure in place, making them “shovel-ready,” and more connections to funding sources, checking the “partnerships” box.
Ramsey implied Ellis is trying to take funds that were being distributed equitably and funnel them to Precinct 1.
At the June 26 meeting, three of the four commissioners voted to instruct the flood control district to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to pull bond funding from lower-ranking projects so the high-priority initiatives — designated as “quartile one projects” — can be completed immediately. Ramsey voted against it.
The approved motion was to “fund all current and future unfunded needs for quartile one projects.” That, according to Ellis’ office, is “worst first language.” The list of quartile one projects, provided by the Harris County Flood District (but not available on the website), appears at the end of this article.
Ramsey said numerous areas of Harris County are flood-prone communities, and shifting more funding to Ellis’ precinct isn’t equitable.
“I am an advocate for not flooding homes,” Ramsey said. “The most underserved folks in Harris County are those folks who had water in their homes. That’s who I’m advocating for. It’s not right for a person to flood in the Memorial Day Flood, in the Tax Day Flood, in the Ike flood, in the Harvey flood, in the Beryl flood. It’s not right.
“When I look at what was being proposed in this assessment, this evaluation, the formula is flawed,” he added. “I took the formula that’s being referenced. If it’s not in quartile one, it’s bad. We must do all in quartile one because the formula said so. It’s a flawed formula. You know how I know that? Because there’s a lot of stuff not being done in Precinct 3.”
For example, Barrett Station, an unincorporated area south of Crosby settled in 1889 following the emancipation of slaves, isn’t listed as a quartile one project because it’s not classified as an underserved community. “Are you kidding me?” Ramsey asked, pointing out that the “worst first” formula cuts Precinct 3 projects by $223 million but the average reduction for other precincts is $100 million.
The commissioner added that the process has been overcomplicated.
“We could land a guy on the moon easier than what we’re trying to do here, in terms of how complicated we’ve made it,” Ramsey said. “It shouldn’t be this hard to figure out whether a project is going to be done in your neighborhood or not. I have to send a registered professional engineer with 20 years of experience to go meet for two hours to try to figure out what projects are being done, just in my precinct.”
Confusion Over Funding and Project Selection
Ellis maintains that there is value in protecting wealthy areas, such as downtowns, shipping ports, universities, or medical districts, but the Commissioners Court in 2019 purposely struck the federal “cost-benefit ratio” language from a motion on prioritization to ensure that bond dollars were distributed equitably rather than “chasing federal, or oftentimes, state dollars knowing cost-benefit ratio would drive it.”
Following the devastating Hill Country floods over the July 4 weekend, Harris County commissioners unanimously agreed in a July 10 meeting to finance projects that already have secured partnerships and approved Community Development Block Grant funding.
At the time elected officials said they want to ensure funded projects are done quickly so a situation similar to what occurred in Kerr County and the surrounding area didn’t happen in Houston.
Houston Public Media reported this would include $20 million for a high-profile floodgate project, the Lake Houston Dam. There appears to be some contention over that assertion, as some commissioners say it may not meet the approved criteria.
Speakers at the June 26 meeting, representing advocacy groups Northeast Action Collective and West Street Recovery, want the court to keep its promises, but the promises were made, in many cases, by predecessors to the current commissioners.
The lack of transparency and confusion around where the dollars are going is leading to distrust, which will harm the court if it tries to pass another bond, Ellis said.
“What the speakers are essentially saying is do what we said we were going to do,” Ellis said. “The reason this language was added to the document was that everybody agreed that the federal notion of cost-benefit ratio helped lead to the inequities that are in place as it relates to flooding issues since the early ‘80s.
“That’s the real crux of the issue. We can talk about dashboards, but if you made a commitment to a prioritization framework, it’s a real simple question to ask: Are you following it? And if you’re not using what the court developed, what are you using?”
Petersen replied, “We implemented the framework, to the best of our ability, as directed by court.”
In reference to confusion over funding, Petersen noted that the program was created with a funding gap that relied on dollars from other sources such as the Texas General Land Office.
“We have had to work very hard to overcome that gap, but we have,” she said, adding that the flood district has secured $2.7 billion in partnerships, “which has allowed us to have $5.2 billion of projects and funds to put to use for the people of Harris County.”
The district has spent $1.5 billion and has another $1.4 billion allotted, she said.
“One of the things we know is the projects that have been constructed are making a difference,” Petersen said. “These projects protected homes during Hurricane Beryl last summer. Thousands of structures would have flooded if it were not for the projects on the ground.”
Woodell says the consensus from day one, when the bond went on the ballot, was that “this was always going to be a down payment.”
“This was always going to be the first step in doing as much as we can but also identifying the future need,” she said. “What we’ve been able to do is have a much better sense of what’s needed next.
“Our goal with the program has been and always will be to get as much as we can done now, to get as many partnerships as we can, to do as much work as we can, and to set ourselves up for the future, so when we go back out for additional funds or partnership funds, we have a suite of projects that we know are sound and ready for us to be put into the ground,” she added.
Residents at last month’s meeting, however, said they didn’t vote for a down payment; they wanted immediate flood protection.
“I’ve been to other precincts. They’ve got water pumps blowing water up from the retention pond,” said northeast Houston resident Benjamin Broadway. “We don’t have that in our districts. We don’t even have the water pump to drain the retention ponds when we have our floods.”
Initially when the bond passed, immediate work was needed to address repairs and damage caused by Harvey but the program has since shifted to proactive initiatives, Petersen said.
“There is a dramatic ramp-up in the next two years to start significantly delivering projects,” she said. “This means we will be seeing progress all the way through 2029.”
Clara Goodwin, an attorney for the nonprofit Bayou City Waterkeeper, said there appears to be a lack of communication and transparency between the flood control district and Commissioners Court.
“It’s possible that the prioritization itself is fine but that there’s not enough communication for you guys to know what is actually happening at flood control and what projects have been started or not started,” Goodwin told Judge Hidalgo.
To add to the already mounting confusion, statements from the flood control district have frequently conflicted with those from elected officials. Woodell said an auditor verified in an independent analysis that the prioritization framework was followed.
“I think there are a lot of different definitions of the spirit of things and all of that, but what we can say with certainty is that we have followed the court’s direction when it comes to the prioritization framework,” she said. “The application of the framework had to be narrow based on when it was introduced at different times in the program but we have done our very best, and according to the auditor, really lived up to what court put into place.
“We can say with confidence that we have executed that and that we’re going to continue to have that be a factor in our decision making,” she added.
Hidalgo, however, said in the June Commissioners Court meeting that the auditor discovered that contracts were being awarded “without any kind of system.”
“I would like to see the receipts and I would like to understand from the auditor how soon you can get this to us,” she said. “I’ve asked for it since last year. It ain’t that complicated.”
What everyone appears to agree on is that they want to be fair and they want projects done quickly.
Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia said in the June meeting that those who were elected after the bond passed “walked into these projects” without knowing some of the challenges they faced. Project scope and inflation have increased and construction was stalled during the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has estimated a 30 percent increase for infrastructure since 2018.
“I’m glad that we’re acknowledging that we didn’t have enough money, ever, to complete these projects,” Garcia said. “No one is saying, drop the prioritization framework, but we are saying let’s get these projects done as fast as possible with the dollars we have left.”
Precinct 4 Commissioner Lesley Briones said she was pregnant during Harvey and her daughter is a visual reminder of how long it has been since the deadly hurricane hit Houston.
“The way I see it, we owe the public a tremendous amount of transparency and honesty about what we can and cannot do and why, what we have committed to and what we remain committed to, and what we are going to do about it,” she said. “What matters most is that we are fair. In addition to being fair, we need to be fast. Seven years have already passed on the clock, and seven years is too long.”
Ramsey agreed that commissioners need to do what they said they’d do, but they need to give clear direction to Petersen and the flood control district.
“I think the problem is us,” he said. “No more games. I don’t want to run the county by committee. We just need to make decisions. We need to be clear. These people out here need to know what we’re going to do and what we’re not going to do.”
As the September 18 presentation approaches, Ellis said he’ll continue to bring up the word “equity.”
“I still remember those people out there in Greens and Halls bayous, including the gentleman who lost six members of his family,” Ellis said. “It’s just not right. I have harped on the equity framework. Equity is just a six-letter word that most people treat like it’s a four-letter word. Most people define equity as, ‘I get more.’ Then, as politicians, when that won’t work, you say divide it equally.
“That’s not equity. When you divide it equally, if there was an imbalance, you reinforce that imbalance, and it’s just not right.”
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
