Community Meeting with Public Works & Engineering
Inwood Forest Subregional Detention Basins
White Oak Conference Center
August 26, 2014
District A council member Brenda Stardig and her staff arranged for this meeting with representatives from the Public Works and Engineering (PWE) Department to discuss the plan for two detention basins to be constructed on the east side of Inwood Forest. Four PWE representatives attended the meeting as well as a representative from the contractor, Lecon, Inc. Lecon, Inc did the work on the Vogel Creek expansion project.
Also in attendance were At Large council members Stephen Costello and Jack Christie and state representative Sylvester Turner.
See this link for the meeting hand out and visuals of the project.
The detention areas will be in the areas bounded by Long Creek to the north, Victory to the south, Maple Tree to the east and Antoine to the west. The work is scheduled to begin next Tuesday, September 2nd . The estimated completion date is February 2015. Homeowners that will be affected by this construction were supposed to have been notified two weeks prior to its start. It was noted by the residents in attendance that that has not occurred. Notification was distributed on Thursday. See this link.
After the meeting, residents were invited to look at detailed plans for the project. It was then that it was noted that these two detention basins were included in a 2010 study that Dodson & Associates, Inc (hydrologists and civil engineers) prepared for the city of Houston. Dodson & Associates was hired by the city when it began to look at purchasing the Inwood Forest golf course property for detention purposes. Dodson & Associates prepared a detention plan for all of the former golf course property in Inwood Forest. It was noted that the 2010 plan is not set in stone, but that these two detention basins came from that plan. PWE will send this information to council member Stardig and her office will give us a link to it when it is available. We will let you know when this happens.
During the meeting, PWE noted that mitigation is needed for the W. Little York road project south of IF. Residents asked why vacant property in Arbor Oaks could not be used. The response was that Harris County owned that property while the city of Houston owns the proposed property in IF.
For this project, approximately 63 acre feet of dirt will be removed. The clay that is dug up will be set aside and used to line the bottom of the detention basins.
Basin K – located between Maple Tree and Vogel Creek – the floor of the basin will be marshy, but not wet. It would be conducive for growing plants like cat tails.
Basin L – located between Antoine and Brushwood – will be a wet bottom detention basin. It will have some small amount of water continuously running through it like Vogel Creek does. The ditch that runs from Long Creek south into Vogel Creek will remain as it is. PWE noted that this ditch is a jurisdictional wetlands per the Corp of Engineers and, therefore, can’t be used as part of this project.
PWE noted that the Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) has requirements for the area surrounding these projects during construction. They require that there be no vegetation in the 30 ft berm area around the perimeter of the project so that the contractor has access to the construction area. That is why a number of trees have been marked for removal. It was noted that some of these trees are very close to homeowners’ property lines. PWE noted that HCFCD could be asked to reconsider the removal of some trees. Council member Stardig noted that this has been done on another project in the district and that they would request that the same be done for this project.
On Thursday afternoon, council member Stardig called with an update. She spoke to Mike Talbott, HCFCD’s director yesterday. He has agreed that HCFCD will identify trees that can be saved and noted that they will try to limit those trees that will be removed to those that are in the basin area and a berm of maybe 10 ft vs 30 ft. HCFCD was out on the property on both Wednesday and Thursday.
Any parts of the cart paths that are removed from the construction area will not be replaced as part of this project. If we want those to be replaced, PWE noted that we would need to take that up with HCFCD. Temporary roads will be installed in parts of the construction area, but will be removed once the project is completed.
For the Basin K construction area between Maple Tree and Vogel Creek, we were told that that trucks would be entering and exiting on Maple Tree near Birchcroft.
The slope of the projects will be 4:1. For an idea of what this will look like, we checked with HCFCD, the detention basins on Little York at Hollister and the Brickhouse Gully located on the eastbound side of 290 between Antoine and W 43rd both have 4:1 slide slopes. Their depths are 22 – 24 ft.
HCFCD has noted that the plan reviews for this project were “… conducted by the District’s Watershed Coordination Department. HCFCD signed the design plan for the regional detention basin component on 4/14/2014 and the related impact analysis was approved by letter dated 10/09/2012. The approval is based on designs submitted for review. Based on our review the project would not have an adverse impact to White Oak Bayou or Vogel Creek.”
HCFCD has confirmed to us that the current project will have no impact on the conditional letter of map revision (CLOMR) that is currently being reviewed by FEMA. The CLOMR is part of the approval process that will eventually lead to the east side of IF being taken out of the flood plain.
The city and HCFCD are still working on an interlocal agreement that will allow HCFCD to be involved in the implementation of an overall detention plan for the property.
Currently, PWE could not tell us who will be responsible for the maintenance of these two basins. That is to be worked out by the city and HCFCD.
It was also noted that homeowners in the affected areas may want to take “before” pictures of their yards in order to document their condition and in the event of any damage or problems. Lecon is also supposed to have taken pictures of each property.
We will update you as more information becomes available. Please do not hesitate to contact the board at board@ifcia.com or by calling the IF message center at 1-888-781-0144 if you have any questions or concerns.