In his latest blog post Mayor Friedberg says that after nearly a year “the Bellaire Master Drainage Concept Plan is off and running.”
He explains that “this partnership among the City, Harris County Flood Control District and TxDOT is absolutely essential to Bellaire and the surrounding area if we are to achieve meaningful flood relief, especially in more extreme storm events that no amount of local improvements could contain.”
One of Bellaire”s biggest problems is our “local drainage systems are overwhelmed by outside storm water.” The Mayor points out that “even with all the added capacity from Project Brays, to fully benefit from that we need to reroute the outside water and improve our own north/south flows into the Bayou.”
The Mayor says, “among the possible improvement alternatives to be studied, with varying degrees of complexity and cost, are: enlargement of the main storm sewers for greater conveyance capacity; massive underground flood tunnels straight to Brays Bayou, with associated siphons and pump stations; intermittent detention ponds to collect and reduce flows to the existing storm sewer system; surface channels to capture and convey sheet flow; relief structures through IH-610 and the railroad berm to reduce or eliminate their damming effect; and oversized storm sewers, with supplemental pump stations, to both increase conveyance and lower peak water surface elevations by providing inline underground detention.”
See the Mayor’s full blog post here.
