Plans for river could affect Brazoria County
By Erin McKeon
The Facts
http://www.thefacts.com/story.lasso?ewcd=f54329f90471a17e
Published December 13, 2007
Brazoria County could be getting some extra water coming down the San Bernard
River if efforts by Wharton County officials to channelize the waterway come to
fruition.
Wharton County contracted with Halff Associates of Austin in 2005 to conduct a
drainage study on the San Bernard River and look at possible ways to alleviate
flooding, Wharton County Judge John Murrile said. The study will examine all
options for addressing the flooding problems by making changes to the river
within county lines, Murrile said.
One of the options could be to channelize the river, which would involve using
heavy machinery to “dig deeper, wider, straighter and smoother than the area is
right now,” said Halff Associates Engineer Wes Birdwell.
“The idea is to make it easier for water to flow,” Birdwell said. “So we’re
looking to clear out all the brush and slope the banks and have a nice smooth
grass surface for water to flow more effectively.”
Brazoria County officials said they could not remember
anything so drastic being done to a river before.
This potentially could result in flooding downstream for Brazoria County
residents, said Roy Edwards, a representative with Friends of the River San
Bernard, a local group working to open the mouth of the river.
“If they alleviate the flooding upstream and the waters get out of their
territory faster, they’ve got to go somewhere,” Edwards said.
He is worried that flooding downstream, in Brazoria County, would result from
the channelization of the river upstream, but Birdwell said he doesn’t think
that will be an issue.
“You don’t solve somebody else’s problem and create problems for someone else,”
Birdwell said. “We’re trying to solve problems, not create problems.”
The San Bernard River begins near New Ulm in Austin County and flows down where
it forms all or part of the county lines between Austin and Colorado counties.
It also borders Austin and Wharton and Wharton and Fort Bend counties before it
cuts across southern Brazoria and eventually empties into the Gulf of Mexico,
according to the Handbook of Texas Online.
As of January 2006, a sandbar created by currents from the Brazos River mouth
had completely stopped the flow of water to and from the Gulf and created a
sandy beach that stretches about 300 yards from the river to the Gulf of Mexico,
according to the Friends of the River Web site, sanbernardriver.com.
“I don’t know how much any drainage plan will work until the mouth of the (San)
Bernard is cleaned out,” Brazoria County Pct. 4 Commissioner Mary Ruth
Rhodenbaugh said.
Wharton County’s plan
Birdwell said whatever avenue Wharton County decides to pursue in alleviating
its issues, officials will make sure it will not adversely affect Brazoria
County.
He said there are three parts to the drainage study. The first is to determine
how bad the flooding problem is in Wharton County. They then will come up with
solutions to help solve the problem and implement whatever course they decide is
best.
The study is about halfway through the first phase, Birdwell said.
“We’re going to look at all the options ranging from doing nothing to
channelizing the river or building flood detention ponds,” he said.
The cost of the solution is not known because engineers do not know what avenue
would best help the area, and Birdwell said a rough estimate will be available
about a year from now.
He said the study stretches along Wharton County and down into Brazoria County
to the bridge at FM 1301 on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers property, where
there is a flood gauge so they can make sure water elevations will not rise in
Brazoria County.
“The key is the river gauge at FM 1301 in Brazoria County,” Edwards said. “They
want to get the water out of Wharton County by using the river gauge information
that goes back for 50 years, and they want to not have it go above the mean
flood elevations at that bridge. If they can control the water coming down to
that point, then it should not adversely effect Brazoria County.”
Wharton County officials said many homes and businesses flood when heavy rains
come to the area around Wharton and East Bernard, and the study also will allow
them to know more about the floodplain in their county as the address their
flooding issues.
“The only thing we knew about flooding in Wharton County is what the FEMA maps
were from three years ago,” Murrile said. “That wasn’t good enough, and we were
redoing some housing additions and subdivision policies, and it wouldn’t be
complete without a drainage study.”
Murrile said the county doesn’t know what the economic cost of the solution to
the flooding might be and wanted to make sure whatever the information used in
reaching a decision was up to date.
In addition to possibly finding ways of preventing flooding, the results from
the study also will help them identify what the floodplain in the county is
like, which will aid the county in planning and prevention, Birdwell said.
“If the end result of all this is we’re going to do nothing, the county will at
least have floodplain maps by which to regulate the future,” Birdwell said.
Changing course
Floodwaters coming downstream into Brazoria County is not the only problem some
people foresee if the river is changed.
“I really dread the notion of this river being destroyed,” Alvin resident
Charles Philips said. “You can’t really get to it because there’s no public
access, there’s private land on each side and it remains relatively
undisturbed.”
Philips said he used to go down to the river when he was a boy and loved the
natural beauty of it and the surrounding woods. Destroying or changing anything
along the river, he said, would destroy that area.
“Rivers meander for a reason, and that’s to kind of buffer that energy of those
runoff events,” San Bernard Wildlife Refuge manager, Shane Kasson said. “As far
as the wildlife habitat, there are a lot of areas right next to the water’s edge
that animals depend on,” such as turkeys, freshwater turtles and migrant birds.
“It’s not going to effect us too much, unless they dump too much water on us,”
West Brazoria Drainage District 11 Director Wink Bowling said. “The Corps of
Engineers is going to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is participating in the study to the degree
that, should the study meet all its criteria, the Corps would agree to reimburse
half the cost of the study and the solution and possibly lend its assistance,
Birdwell said.
Wharton County is funding 75 percent of the study and the rest came from a grant
from the Texas Development Water Board, Murrile said.
“The study is being conducted according to the Corps of Engineers criteria so
that at the end of the day we don’t have to go back and redo anything,” Birdwell
said.
Erin McKeon covers West of the Brazos communities for The Facts. Contact her at
(979) 237-0152.
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CHANGING THE CHANNEL
Wharton County
is looking into the feasibility of channelizing (smoothing, straightening,
widening and deepening) the San Bernard river to help alleviate drainage woes
Brazoria County shouldn’t be affected by the plans for, according to Wharton
County officials