Northpark Drive Expansion Begins in Earnest

After what turned out to be a ceremonial groundbreaking on 4/13/23, the Northpark Drive expansion project appears to have started in earnest today, 7/25/2023. Northpark is a vital evacuation route for tens of thousands of Kingwood and Porter residents during floods.

Cones and Culvert Line Northpark Center Ditch

Traffic cones line the center ditch between Russell-Palmer and the Kingwood Diversion Ditch.

Contractors have also stacked what looks like six-foot reinforced-concrete pipe on the edge of the ditch opposite Flowers of Kingwood.

They have also begun excavating the Northpark center ditch.

Project Partners

Project partners include:

• Lake Houston Redevelopment Authority
• City of Houston District E
• Montgomery County Precinct 4
• Texas Dept. of Transportation
• Harris County Flood Control

Plan Vs. Execution

In general, the project partners plan to widen Northpark by a lane in each direction (toward the middle). But instead of taking land and parking from merchants, the project partners plan to replace the center ditch with culvert then pave over it.

Early plans indicated that the area between US59 and Russell-Palmer would be Phase One and that Russell-Palmer to the Diversion Ditch would follow.

However, a flood-control expert I talked to today indicated that drainage projects generally move from downstream to upstream. And the water in the Northpark Ditch definitely flows toward the Diversion Ditch. So perhaps the plans have changed.

Significantly, during the groundbreaking, officials talked about construction occurring on the upstream end first.

The Lake Houston Redevelopment Authority (TIRZ 10) website contains a number of videos and construction docs that detail the ultimate vision for the project as well as next steps.

Will Culvert Convey as Much as Ditch?

The first thing that popped into my mind when I looked at the size of the culvert and the size of the ditch was that the culvert could not possibly convey all the water that the ditch used to.

Then I read this letter from Harris County Flood Control to the engineering company. It states, “The proposed improvement includes enlarging the proposed storm sewer system to provide inline detention and modeling the restrictors needed to meet allowable outflow requirements for both outfalls.”

The letter continues, “This involves placing restrictors in the model and then iteratively upsizing the storm sewer system and adjusting the restrictors until an optimized solution is reached.”

Are the pipes shown above the restrictors? I sure hope this works. How much bigger can the upstream pipes be?

Having worked near Northpark for 22 years, I’ve seen the ditch overflow on multiple occasions. I’ve seen cars plunge to the bottom, emergency rescues, and stalled vehicles.

Here is the engineering company’s drainage impact analysis. And this presentation provides a project overview for the pre–bid conference for the western portion of the project. It shows a 32-month construction schedule for the western portion alone – even with a six day work week.

More Info to Follow; Some Docs Not Available

The TIRZ docs for the eastern portion of the project (Russell-Palmer to Diversion Ditch) are not available. The TIRZ website reports “404 Errors – Files Not Found.”

More news and analysis when I can find the docs and make more calls about the order of construction phases. Check back often.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 7/25/2023

2156 Days since Hurricane Harvey

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