Houston works to hold floodwaters at Inwood golf course after Harvey
, 2023-03-31 14:05:05,
Houston officials gathered Friday to break ground on one of the city’s largest flood control projects since Hurricane Harvey, a group of detention basins at a defunct Inwood golf course that can hold enough water to fill the Astrodome.
When completed in 2025, the 12 basins on what had been the Inwood Forest Golf Course will relieve as much as 1 foot of flood risk to some 4,400 homes and businesses in northwest Houston, with a capacity of 1,200 acre-feet of water, or 391 million gallons, Mayor Sylvester Turner said.
The project will include recreational aspects, as well, including 12 miles of trails, three pedestrian bridges and three disc golf courses.
The roughly $80 million overhaul is partly funded by a hazard mitigation grant from the federal government issued after Harvey. The Inwood basin is one of four flood control projects the city is pursuing with that money and the first to break ground, more than five years after the record storm deluged Houston.
“It’s not just about digging a hole for the detention basin,” Turner said at a Friday news conference. “It’s about improving the quality of life in this area.”
BACKGROUND: Progress on post-Harvey flood control efforts remains slow. Here’s why.
Harris County will split the local cost with the city. The county has $2.5 billion in flood control bond money approved by voters in 2018, making the project part of its much larger portfolio.
It is a different story at City Hall, which has no similar source of funds. It also has been ignored in the Texas General Land Office’s distribution of about $1.3 billion in federal mitigation funding, an omission the Department of Housing and Urban Development later found was discriminatory.
That means the city’s largest investments in flood control come from a single grant, a $280 million award from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That money will help pay for four projects.
In addition to the Inwood basin, those projects are new floodgates for the Lake Houston Dam, an underground detention basin near Memorial City, and the North Canal, a project aimed at reducing the flood risk in downtown and along much of the lower White Oak Bayou.
RELATED: Houston and Harris County asked for $1.3B in flood aid. The GLO’s offer: $0.
Stephen Costello, the city’s chief recovery officer, said he was in Austin this…
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