Flooded out residents say it didn't have to happen.

You can see the video here, but basically, a neighborhood has been complainting for quite a while.. hoping City Hall listens.  A neighborhood that has been around for decades is now dealing with a new problem -- flooding. They claim development around I-10 has caused flooding in the neighborhood between Bunker Hill and Blalock.

Kim Clack doesn't have much of a house to show off. On April 28, flood waters poured through the streets of west Houston and into her Bunker Hill home.  "We had to take out 48 inches," said Clack of the damage.

Longtime homeowners say this could have been prevented if city leaders and big name developers had listened to their concerns years ago, but they didn't.

"We had neighborhood meetings. We talked. We expressed our concerns and they basically decided that our concerns were not practical," said homeowner Barbara Hunt.

Hunt says homeowners grew worried when a large development along I-10 and Bunker Hill were allowed to be built without additional retention, and when heavy rain fell, it ran off the parking lots and into their homes.

"I was answering emails about this," said Houston Mayor Bill White Monday.

But Mayor White says the developers didn't get special treatment because the property was already covered in asphalt before the developers bought the land and began building.

"If something is built, and somebody buys it form somebody where it already has some paved over and is already developed, we don't have new detention requirements," said Mayor White.

Mayor White says the city will invest $30 million to build and improve drainage across Houston, but it's too late for the Bunker Hill homeowners. They have a lot to clean up and no permanent solution in sight.

"They voiced their concerns whenever everything was built around here and Bunker Hill being widened, and now we're flooded and everyone's upset," said Clack.

The homeowners know they won't get a drainage basin, but they would like to see some retroactive drainage options for their area. So far, city leaders have no plans to do so.

Comments

[ct]

Just pay your overvalued property taxes and shut up. Silly serfs.

[Rhino76]

Of course none of them shop at the HEB or other stores that were built on the old Daniel site they constantly moan about? Houston--It was built on a swamp!

I drove out there today and the city is currently widening the roadway and almost tripling the drainage capacity underneath Bunker Hill.

Isn't it funny that folks want development to stop just after their house or neighborhood is built?

[ex_Daniel]

"I drove out there today and the city is currently widening the roadway and almost tripling the drainage capacity underneath Bunker Hill."

Posted by: Rhino76 | May 26, 2009 at 12:34 AM

Let's see. All the concrete for the road has been poured so there is no evidence of the size of the culverts that were installed, so exactly how did you determine that the drainage capacity underneath the roadway was tripled? By the way, Bunker Hill was a two lane road with no sidewalks, so there was a lot of permeable ground cover. And I can find nowhere in the engineering drawings evidence of a tripling of storm sewer size.