Langwood II Civic Club

Brickhouse Gully Update: Nov 1, 2007

Chuck Brush updates on his meeting with two HCFCD engineers

Hi Neighbors,

Today I met with two engineers from HCFCD. We had an hour and a half long productive discussion. The engineers agreed to examine their flow charts for the gully with a 10% increase in volume figured in, which is what we were able to predict, using Juan Silvas (corner of Gold Creek and Bingle) surveying and math skills. This would be the approximate result of removing the step in the gully floor under the bridges. If a 10% increase in flow will not flood people downstream, we will go to the next step of requesting a project and see what happens. This amount of increased flow would, by Mr. Spenn's reckoning, drop the water level 6 inches to a foot in the gully.

The engineers agreed to try and include our folks that repeatedly flood in their next grant request to the feds for buyout money.

There was some discussion of the floodway designation for our area being modified as Mr. Spenn believes that a mapping error may have caused the floodway to be larger than necessary. He will know something on this in January. I think that this is hopeful, still, we need to keep calling HCFCD, writing letters, and producing a generalized stink with the city over the floodway ordinance and the flooding in our area. It is impossible to tell how much our protests have moved the city and county to reexamine the floodway and ordinance 43-19, but there are signs of real movement away from the drastic measures as originally passed by the council.

The engineers were really nice and quite helpful. They wanted me to take back to Langwood II that they were very aware of our problems with brick house gully.

The city has promised me a meeting with an engineer but it hasn't happened yet. I may just have to try and go around Toni Lawrence and directly to the engineering department. To date, and for the record, Ms. Lawrence has not been helpful at all in my efforts to get something going on this.

Please forward this info. to other neighbors not on my e-mail list.

Sincerely,

Chuck Brush
8510 Sonneville
713-460-1041

Email us
chuckbrush@aol.com