exTRA by the Trinity River Authority of Texas

Converting flood storage to water supply in Joe Pool Lake could help North Texas weather droughts and allow the Trinity River Authority to provide water when it is scarce, but first the Authority must determine if there is a benefit to doing so. Yu Zhang, an associate professor in the Civil Engineering Department at The University of Texas at Arlington, and Victoria Chen, a professor in the Industrial, Manufacturing and Systems Engineering Department, are using a $50,000 TRA grant to build models and test software that will help the agency make a decision. Should the TRA decide to convert flood storage, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will make the final determination whether to proceed.

The Kimbell School of Geosciences at Midwestern State University received a nearly $400,000 grant to begin an outreach program geared toward high school students. The National Science Foundation’s Bridge and Earth Science Training (BEST) program invites high school juniors and seniors that may be interested in a future career in the geosciences to a summer camp at MSU. The goal of the camp is to spark an interest in the geosciences field in these students and encourage them to pursue a geosciences degree at MSU.

Throughout the day Monday, Aug. 28, Bradford T. Laney's wife repeatedly insisted their Kingwood home in Fosters Mill was going to flood. Laney wasn't worried.
"You couldn't even see water on our street," Laney said. "Water was draining beautifully, perfectly, (there were) like a few puddles."
He looked outside at their young daughter playing happily in shallow puddles, and he was convinced flooding was in no way a threat to them. In retrospect, he said, his wife was completely right.

Hurricane Nate was downgraded to a tropical storm around 4:30 a.m. ET Sunday, with maximum winds of 70 mph. The storm, moving north-northeast at 23 mph, is moving farther inland over Mississippi and Alabama. Nate made its second landfall as a Category 1 storm around 1:30 a.m. ET near Biloxi, Mississippi, with maximum winds of 85 mph, the National Hurricane Center announced.

For 60 years, the Texas Water Development Board has been the keeper of a master list of projects that are supposed to meet the state's water needs for the next half century. But the latest list the agency is compiling is not about supplying water — it's about managing it. Earlier this year in the wake of two major floods that crippled communities across the state — and just months before the remnants of Hurricane Harvey dumped a historic amount of rainfall on southeast Texas — state lawmakers voted to give the agency $600,000 to create the state's first-ever flood plan. The document will broadly evaluate statewide flood risks and detail projects local governments want to pursue to mitigate those vulnerabilities with suggestions as to how the state could help fund or finance them.

The first segment of the San Pedro Creek Improvements Project, a $53.4 million operation totaling 2,200 feet of creek development, is so far on track for completion for the city’s tricentennial observance next May. Project officials said initial concerns about the project’s pace stemmed from changes in design plans and delays from utility relocation.

Despite some rain this week, drought conditions have returned to Northeast Texas. The latest report from the Texas Water Development Board shows abnormally dry conditions returned to the entire northeastern corner of the state over the past week.

Nearly 60 Harris County homeowners are suing two state agencies for what they say has been more than two decades of mismanagement of the Lake Conroe Dam, flooding their houses multiple times, including from Hurricane Harvey.
In a lawsuit filed Monday, families from Kingwood, Atascocita and Humble accuse the San Jacinto River Authority and the Texas Water Development Board of "intentionally flooding" their homes with releases from the dam and reservoir dating as far back as 1994.

Just how worried is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers about a possible failure of the Addicks and Barker dams? And how worried should Houston be? The agency has long been criticized for providing few specifics on that issue, even after it found voids in the walls of the dams years ago, and classified them in 2009 as "unsafe" with an "urgent and compelling" need for action.

While residents in a few villages of The Woodlands continue repairing their flood-damaged homes - some for the second or third time in less than two years - more than a dozen agencies are scrambling to find solutions to a problem with "no short-term fix."

Hurricane Harvey was tough on wetlands, and even tougher on wetland scientists, like me. I have spent a career focusing on wetlands along the Upper Texas Gulf Coast. Like the Lorax, I speak for the wetlands (and the prairies and forests and all the rest of it!). I have devoted considerable energy to expounding all the virtues of wetlands, including their ability to decrease downstream flooding.

Although two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is water and less than one percent of that water is currently available for our use, according to the Federal Energy Management Program, or FEMP. As the U.S. population increases, so does our water use and our need to conserve water. In the City of San Antonio and its surrounding areas, water has become a valuable commodity due to the growing population.

NACOGDOCHES – A Texas Watershed Steward workshop on water quality related to the Attoyac Bayou watershed will be from 1-5 p.m. Nov. 7 at the Nacogdoches County Exposition and Civic Center, 3805 N.W. Stallings Drive, Nacogdoches.

This wasn't the first time, by any means, that people living near the lake had experienced flooding. In fact, water has sloshed out of the Lake Conroe reservoir and into a regulatory easement held by the San Jacinto River Authority and the Texas Water Board for more than 20 years now, inundating homes and other structures in the easements located in Kingwood, Atascocita and Humble.

HOUSTON, Texas (Local 2/Fox 24) - For 60 years, the Texas Water Development Board has been the keeper of a master list of projects that are supposed to meet the state's water needs for the next half century. But the latest list the agency is compiling is not about supplying water — it's about managing it.

Picture this familiar scenario: you’re snug on your couch, nursing a cup of tea as your thoughts drift from the muted percussions of raindrops smattering the window beside you. Or maybe you’re gripping an umbrella in one hand and a teetering armful of work to-dos in the other, dodging parking lot puddles on the rainy trek to your car.

NEAR ALAMO – Residents living south of Alamo are saying they’re had enough of the odors coming from a nearby wastewater treatment facility. Geraldo Leal lives just outside of Alamo. He believes the offensive odors coming from the city's wastewater treatment facility are affecting his quality of life. He said spending time outdoors is difficult.

WASHINGTON, D.C.- Tuesday, Reps. Ted Poe (TX-02), Brian Babin (TX-36), John Culberson (TX-07), Al Green (TX-09), Gene Green (TX-29), and Pete Olson (TX-22) introduced the bipartisan Texas Flood Accountability Act of 2017, requiring the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, San Jacinto River Authority, and City of Houston, among others to submit a report within 90 days for all dams, reservoirs, lakes and other water retention facilities in the Southeast Texas region. This bill requires that these entities report on the water capacity, overflow levels, notification processes during flood emergencies, and recommendations to prevent future unplanned releases of water from the facilities. Failure to submit this information will result in a loss of federal funding to the facility.