Texas is changing how it plans for floods. What does that mean for Dallas-Fort Worth?
The devastating impact of Hurricane Harvey on the Gulf Coast in 2017 has triggered an unprecedented effort to prevent the same damage from happening again in communities across Texas, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Thanks to the passage of a $1.7 billion flood control bill during the 2019 legislative session, 15 regional groups have begun developing Texas’ first-ever statewide flood plan under the supervision of the Texas Water Development Board. With growing concerns about urban flash flooding in Fort Worth and surrounding cities, the plan for the Trinity region, encompassing North Texas, will lay out the area’s flood risks and name specific goals for how officials can address those issues.
Investments in stormwater infrastructure and the pursuit of more state funding for flood prevention projects will likely be included in the Trinity region’s blueprint, said Rachel Ickert, a member of the planning committee and the water resource engineering director for the Tarrant Regional Water District. The rapid growth in Tarrant County and the accompanying sprawl of concrete that cannot absorb water and can exacerbate flooding problems is also on Ickert’s radar.
“We’re looking to do some more proactive planning before all the development occurs, and try to get a handle on the flows and do some mitigation before there are all these structures in place, and there is such a problem to deal with,” Ickert said. “If you can mitigate on the front end, you can save yourself a lot of money down the road.”
While this type of long-term planning is the norm for ensuring that Texas cities have an adequate water supply, this is the first time the same rigor is being applied to flood planning and mapping. That’s a significant demonstration of the state’s commitment to addressing the complexity of flooding issues, said Nick Fang, a civil engineering professor and flood control expert at UT Arlington who was most recently tapped to lead flood prevention efforts at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
“The state is stepping forward in the right direction to come up with those regional groups and have them study and work together and communicate,” Fang said. “They want to study at a regional scale to make sure that any solution for each region that they come up with is not going to cause any adverse impact to the nearby or downstream communities. That is a very important coordination, and communication is the key.”
Regional planning is not completely without precedent in North Texas, Ickert said, pointing to the Flood Management Task Force convened by the North Central Texas Council of Governments. That committee brings together staff from 10 cities, four counties and two government entities concerned with the Trinity River basin, according to the association’s website.
“In my mind, that should set somewhat of a blueprint that the rest of the state probably could learn from and use,” Ickert said. “North Texas seems to be pretty unique in that regard. I don’t think other areas in the state already have some strong regional planning process already in place.”
The regional groups, composed of 12 voting members, will be on a tight timeline to finish their comprehensive reports, Fang said. By January 2023, each region must submit their plan to the Texas Water Development Board, which will then compile them into a statewide report to be finished in September 2024.
All incoming members attended orientation in late October, and most planning groups will meet again before the end of the year. A major component of their work will include assessing climate patterns and expected rainfall based on recent data, including a 2018 study published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that predicts more extreme rain events for Texas.
Alongside that climate data, flood planners must accommodate the technical challenges and economic priorities of the region, Fang said. The complexities are endless, he said, but the start of the statewide process is a sign of how flood prevention might improve if public officials share knowledge with each other.
“There is a demanding need for people to really revise and reinforce the current flood protection measures right here and incorporate them into each step of the engineering design process,” Fang said. “We don’t want to see one person’s solution be the cause for other people’s problems later on. We need to have very good coordination … and this is a very good start so far.”
