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Out of Control

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Actually, Loomis seems to have made a conscious decision to allow Baxter to violate the spirit of the city's policy. For one thing, FEMA encourages local communities to use more restrictive data, including draft maps and preliminary flood insurance surveys. For another, the federal agency had completed its review of the actual floodplain delineations by October 1998. The new maps were delayed another year while FEMA reviewed additional data on subsidence in the upper reaches of the watershed.

Jim Blackburn, a Houston environmental attorney whose clients include the homeowners suing the flood control district, says allowing Baxter to develop his land based on an outdated map "just makes [him] nuts."

"That whole project was approved on the basis of old maps, which means they were already obsolete from a flood control standpoint," Blackburn says. "These are the kinds of things that happen all over this county, and it has to do with an attitude of protecting developers more so than protecting the public."

"What's the difference between God and lawyers?" Mike Loomis asks.

"What?"

"God doesn't think he's a lawyer."

Loomis is a round man with a red face, a gray mustache and large wire-framed glasses, a 55-year-old Harley-loving people-person with a back-slapping congeniality. Loomis assumes a certain status in holding down what he calls "one of the hottest seats in town." Before he became the city's floodplain manager, five and a half years ago, he was a hazard mitigation specialist for FEMA, a state windstorm inspector and an insurance adjuster.

"So I've been helping people a long time," he says. "I'm not the most popular guy in Houston -- as a developer, you would not like me -- but I'm here to do a job and keep people safe."

Loomis offices in a double cubicle in the corner of a first-floor office at 3300 Main Street. He points out two framed certifications on the wall near his desk. "No. 3 issued by the state association of floodplain managers, out of, I don't know, maybe 60 across Texas now," he says. "No. 96 in the country from our national association in Wisconsin, out of several thousand now. I proctored the national exam in Louisiana a couple of months ago."

Because of the city's repetitive flood-loss record -- 1,989 buildings, 5,600 floods, $103.7 million in claims since 1978, not including damages caused by Allison -- FEMA ordered Loomis to submit a floodplain management plan before the agency would adjust local flood insurance rates. Last month, Tom Rolen, director of public works, announced that an audit of Loomis's plan had earned floodplain residents a 10 percent discount on flood insurance.

The city impressed auditors by removing 33 repetitive-loss properties from the floodplain; by requiring new housing in floodplains to be built one foot over flood elevations; by requiring developers to limit postdevelopment drainage discharges to predevelopment levels; and by making floodplain maps available to the public. "Every library in the city has floodplain maps now," Loomis says. "That's our flood protection library."

That may be beside the point. To gather public input on the city's floodplain management practices, Loomis distributed questionnaires at town-hall-style meetings held last winter. Either he didn't distribute very many or few people got their hands on one. Loomis reported just 18 responses to the questionnaire -- not enough to guide the policies of a city the size of Houston, the floodplain management plan said, although they "may provide anecdotal evidence of systemic problems."

Nearly half the opinions expressed were directed at what many consider the "systemic problem" of unfettered development in the city's floodplains. One respondent to Loomis's questionnaire demanded "stricter guidelines" for developers. Another wrote "no building in the 100-year floodplain," echoing a respondent who wanted the city to prohibit the "placement of fill in the floodplain." One person asked that the city's floodplain management office "consider the economic impact of such fill/construction on existing development."

Culp says it's unlikely the city will heed those suggestions. "In a place like Houston, restricting development to places outside the floodplain would make it virtually impossible to develop anything," he says. "So I don't think our legislative officials are going to make that decision."

Perhaps not, but one of them may be starting to see the light. Three years ago, District A Councilman Bruce Tatro was vilified by residents of Timbergrove Manor and Shady Acres for sponsoring the East T.C. Jester extension and Baxter's development project. But prompted by residents who were flooded by Tropical Storm Allison, Tatro has started to drive a harder bargain on development in the White Oak floodplain. Last July, the councilman sent a request through public works director Rolen for specifics on the storm-water detention planned for the T.C. Jester Apartments.

By October, Tatro, frustrated by the lack of a satisfactory response, was criticizing the floodplain management office every week at the council's "pop-off" session. Finally, in late November, Tatro threatened to use his authority to withhold Gross's occupancy permit. Meanwhile, the Press wasn't having any better luck with the developer's detention plan, which Loomis approved back in August 2000.

At the time, the developer told the city he would excavate an empty lot upstream, just west of the Retreat at City Park apartments. However, at some point after that -- Gross didn't return the Press's calls -- the developer started claiming he had already taken 22,000 cubic yards from an eight-acre tract owned by the flood control district. The district leases the land, a ball field complex that is home to the Timbergrove Little League, to the Retreat for use as a storm-water detention pond.

But as recently as three weeks ago, Tom Moody, the Retreat's drainage engineer, said he knew nothing about other developers using the ball field as detention. When informed of that, Culp -- under pressure from Tatro as well -- launched an "investigation" into Gross's storm-water detention.

On December 10, after several meetings and discussions with the developers' engineering consultants, Culp provided the Press with a simple, two-column ledger that indicates three developers -- Gross, Baxter and Perry Homes -- are claiming storm-water detention capacity at the ball field. According to the figures, which were prepared by the consultants, the sports complex has already been lowered five feet, with another two feet to be excavated in the near future. That was enough for Culp to declare that the mystery of Gross's detention had been solved.

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