Drainage report focuses on fixes for Greenspoint flooding

HOUSTON – Few can forget the heartbreaking images of flooding from April of last year.

Some 2,000 ground-floor apartments in the Greenspoint area flooded on Tax Day, displacing more than 5,000 residents, like Jelinda Strange. She lives at the Arbor Court apartments on Greens Road.

"It's been good so far," Strange said.

[READ: North Houston District Drainage Evaluation Report]

To alleviate flooding in the future, the North Houston District commissioned a study right after the storm. Engineers came up with a series of recommendations. One includes buying some of the neighborhood apartment complexes and turning them into flood detention ponds.

"Several of the owners have expressed interest in selling. they realize their apartment complexes are deep in the floodway and prone to flooding," Robert Fiederlein, of the North Houston District, said.

Fiederlein said residents would be moved into affordable housing and that the district is currently working on a few affordable housing projects in the area. Federal flood relief money working its way down from Washington, D.C., to the state and into Harris County would make it all possible.

"That basin would then allow storm sewer lines in the major roadways to be upgraded and it would regulate the flow back into the bayou from those upgraded storm sewer lines," Fiederlein said.

File: North Houston District Drainage Evaluation Report

Strange said she is all for it. No one here, she says, wants to see a repeat of what they saw last April.

"They'd be able to find us another place to live. I would just get me a new apartment," Strange said.

The North Houston District says it should know sometime in July or August just how much money is available to the city of Houston. That will determine the future course of the project.


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