Building "Bridges" Across the Bayou City!
The most cherished compliments come from the people you respect the most. Yesterday, I (and ReduceFlooding.com) received an award from the Lions Clubs International Foundation for Dedicated Humanitarian Services. About Lions Clubs You would be hard pressed to find a group of people more dedicated to community service than the 1.4 million members of 49,000 […]
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Read More3/26/25 – From a public policy perspective, is it more economical to permit floodplain developments or mitigate them after floods? I asked ChatGPT that question this morning. It was consistent with year’s of research on flooding. The issue pertains directly to posts in the last two days about a proposed development called the Crossing at […]
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Read More3/25/25 – Eight years after Hurricane Harvey and a massive region-wide effort to update flood maps, FEMA still features maps on its website based on decades-old data that don’t come close to showing true flood risk. The old maps cause confusion among buyers who may not understand their limitations. And that helps developers pursue and […]
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Read More3/24/25 – On March 21, 2025, the Supreme Court of Texas ruled on a long-running lawsuit between a developer and the City of Houston over floodplain regulation. The Supreme Court reversed an Appeals Court judgement, which had dismissed the developer’s claims against the City, thus keeping the case alive. The developer argued that the City’s […]
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Read More3/22/25 – Enough of the pendulum politics already! We seem to swing from the left to right, from over regulation to no regulation, oblivious to any middle ground. The latest agency in the Washington crosshairs: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). No doubt, most business people can cite an extreme example of EPA overregulation. And no […]
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Read More3/21/25 – Montgomery County has received approval from the Texas General Land Office (GLO) for three “de-snagging” projects totaling $60,374,999.66. The grant, first reported in 2022, stems from money allocated to Texas by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) after Hurricane Harvey. I’ll discuss the complex, lengthy process involved in awarding these […]
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Read More3/20/25 – Montgomery County has asked U.S. Representative Dan Crenshaw for federal help in sponsoring a study on repurposing old sand mines. Please send a letter expressing your support. For less than $1 – the cost of an envelope and a stamp – you could help reduce your flood risk. Why Repurposing is Necessary Southern […]
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Read More3/19/25 – San Jacinto West Fork sand-mining problems persisted this morning, even as the House Natural Resources Committee met to discuss legislation intended to deal with them. With one exception, the miners seemed blissfully unaware of the problems they were causing. And at least one committee member seemed to be a ringer for the sand-mining […]
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Read More3/18/25 – Five sand mines upstream from Lake Houston are wider than Lake Houston itself. But that’s not the only statistic that puts the area’s sand mining issues in perspective. The combined size of all upstream mines also exceeds the size of Lake Houston. Let’s look how these statistics relate to a bill pending in […]
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Read More3/16/25 – The Bayou Land Conservancy recently hosted a gathering at which Ray Audas of Montgomery gave an inspiring talk. Audas discussed his family’s efforts to preserve their land – Cindy’s Redbud Nature Preserve – in a natural state. A few days later, I attended another meeting. There, a developer talked about building a luxury […]
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