Fort Bend County commissioners approved nearly $170,000 toward flood mitigation efforts on Thursday, directing the money toward flood studies, creek repairs and engineering work to map land near Highway 6. The vote came alongside more than $1 million for new flood-fighting equipment and a roughly $320,000 land purchase along the Brazos River, as county leaders continue chipping away at a problem that has left streets and neighborhoods flooding for years.
Creeks, Tractors And A 28-Acre Mapping Project
According to Click2Houston, the newly approved funding will pay for flood studies, repairs to Flatbank and Coon creeks, and the hiring of engineers to map a 28-acre piece of land near Highway 6. The county also allocated more than $1 million for equipment, including six new tractors and a trailer, the outlet reported.
Commissioners separately approved an approximately $320,000 purchase of land along the Brazos River, which the report says will help control erosion and reduce flooding. The move follows years of concern over the river’s banks: a 2018 study commissioned by Sugar Land and Fort Bend County found that without mitigation efforts, ongoing riverbank erosion could threaten more than 700,000 county residents within 30 years, as detailed by the Houston Chronicle.
Residents Describe Building Their Own Defenses
For some Fort Bend residents, the county’s latest spending follows years of taking matters into their own hands. William Carpenter has lived on Sycamore Road in Rosenberg for more than 50 years, and to protect his home he built a barrier around the property, per the same Click2Houston account. He said the barrier’s gates keep floodwater from entering his home, while neighbors without similar protection have not been so fortunate.
“They had 3 feet of water in their houses, the ones that don’t have this barrier,” Carpenter said, according to the report. His account underscores how uneven flood protection remains block by block even as county-level funding grows.
Missouri City Resident Points To Drainage And Trees
Missouri City resident Sharen Hadad described a different but related problem: standing water that lingers long after storms pass. “All of this goes under and it stays wet for a very long time, because of the trees and there’s just not the proper drainage there,” she said, per the same report. Hadad added that the county needs to keep tending to its creeks, bayous and flood plains, saying officials “are going to have to keep taking care of” them.
A Dashboard In The Works For Faster Flood Response
The Nov. 12 approvals build on other recent county efforts to modernize flood response. At a Sept. 24 drainage district meeting, commissioners approved an additional $50,000 for a new flood dashboard, according to Community Impact. Combined with a previously allocated $200,000 agreement with infrastructure consulting firm Halff, the dashboard project’s total cost comes to under $300,000, funded out of the flood bond contingency budget…