News

Out of Control

Continued from page 5

Fred Lazare, Timbergrove Manor resident and president of the White Oak Bayou Association, says residents in the lower reach of the White Oak aren't sure what to believe. "There are two schools of thought," Lazare says. "Was Allison just a freak convergence of bad events, or was it a harbinger of things to come? More people than I would have thought think it's going to happen again and again."

Indeed, dozens of residents have already decided not to return to Timbergrove Manor, which extends on both sides of the bayou and encompasses 1,000 homes. Lorraine Cherry, vice president of the neighborhood civic club, says 11 of 19 houses on her street are up for sale; eight of those are so badly damaged they will have to be demolished. Many others are anxiously waiting to learn whether FEMA and Harris County will fund a buyout program that would eliminate the houses from the White Oak floodplain. In the meantime, however, the future of this once quiet and tidy neighborhood -- a solid, middle-class enclave of young professionals, middle-aged families and retirees -- is uncertain.

"A lot of people just walked away," Cherry says. "They did nothing to their houses and they're no longer salvageable. If the buyout doesn't happen, they'll be stuck. Their houses have no more value on the market. We're staying for a couple of years, I guess, because we're not even sure we can sell the house now."

Earlier this year, the White Oak Bayou Association submitted a proposal to the flood control district that represents the area's last hope for storm-water detention. Eureka Springs, designed by Kevin Shanley, is modeled on the 441-acre Willow Waterhole, a detention and conservation reserve constructed along Brays Bayou. But the project, envisioned for the 187-acre Katy railroad corridor, south of 11th Street, is expensive. The cheapest of three alternatives designed by Shanley would cost $53 million.

Federal funding through the flood control district is unlikely. Steve Fitzgerald says that although storm-water detention in the lower White Oak watershed is desperately needed, Eureka Springs would provide a negligible flood control benefit.

"People have been asking us for ten years or more to consider some of these tracts" for detention, Fitzgerald says. "But to have any impact, it would have to be a lot bigger."

In the meantime, land adjacent to the old rail yard is being claimed for development. The 77-home project has already been subdivided, and rumors abound that surveying crews seen in the area are plotting additional subdivisions near the site that would encroach on storm-water detention for the surrounding neighborhoods.

Clark Pines resident Mary Abshier wonders whether even a small detention site would have saved some of the houses in her neighborhood, including her own. Abshier bought her home in the spring of 1999, before she knew Clark Pines was in the White Oak floodplain. She says longtime residents assured her that the bayou had never posed a threat to the 50-year-old subdivision. Since June, Abshier has watched with a sense of dread as new development visible from her front yard nears completion.

"What kind of city planning is this?" she asks incredulously. "Are they really trying to destroy the inner city so that developers can come in and change the whole nature of Houston?"

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