A developer is planning to build a strip shopping center inside the Clear Creek floodway in Friendswood, on top of thousands of cubic yards of trucked-in dirt, months after Hurricane Harvey deluged the town.

Westover Plaza, Ltd. is developing three acres near Dixie Farm Road and Blackhawk Boulevard. Some people who live downstream are flabbergasted that the city would allow it after Clear Creek swallowed sections of town, with about 2,400 homes taking on damage citywide. Volunteers had to scramble to evacuate terrified residents of a nursing home perched near a tributary.

RECONSTRUCTION: Friendswood to pick up debris from post-Harvey projects

“This is going to cause more flooding,” said Shawn Johnson, who lives just across Clear Creek from the proposed shopping center.

Plans envision retail and restaurants. Up to 48 acres of the site could eventually be developed, according to real estate ads that market the property as Parkwood Plaza.

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“I don’t think it will affect flooding at all,” said Jon Arledge, managing partner for Westover and a longtime Houston-area developer.

He said drainage plans for the site haven’t been finalized, but he expects to be able to engineer his way out of any flooding impacts, as he says he has done with projects across the region for 50 years.

But to Johnson and other concerned residents, that represents an outdated philosophy.

It’s the latest fault line between the Houston area’s inexorable growth and its waterlogged residents’ newfound passion for developing in a way that respects the risk of increasingly intense floods. Many who have questioned the project on social media are planning to address the city council on Monday.

Johnson said he would never have stumbled across the project and its implications had he not seen trucks hauling dirt to the site in February.

NO ELEVATION: Friendswood allows residents to rebuild at ground level

The local attorney then began an investigation that led to a surprising conclusion: When the city of Friendswood reverted to old flood maps after Harvey, it claimed the change was aimed at helping flood victims rebuild.

But it also worked to the advantage of Westover and the previous landowner, who sold three of the 48 acres to the developer in early May, property records show.

The city reverted to the 20-year-old maps in December, saying it would help residents avoid expensive requirements to elevate their homes. People in mapped flood plains whose homes are deemed substantially damaged generally have to elevate if they choose to rebuild, under requirements of the federal flood insurance program.

The older maps have smaller flood plains. By adopting them, city council members shrank the areas where the strictest elevation requirements apply. Had they not taken that step, they’d effectively be forcing flood-ravaged residents to abandon their homes, Morad Kabiri, then the assistant city manager, warned council in December. Many could not afford the $150,000 to $250,000 it can take to elevate.

Similarly, if the Westover project were controlled by the 2007 maps, its location in the floodway would subject it to strict regulations that would pose enormous obstacles to development. Under the older maps, it is outside the floodway and many of those obstacles don’t apply.

Johnson believes city staff convinced the council to adopt the obsolete maps not to help residents, but to allow the project to go forward. He points out that the city hasn’t proven the map change helped more than a few homeowners.

City staff declined to discuss the matter because Johnson has threatened to sue to stop the development. Mayor Mike Foreman did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

“The city affirms that all laws, rules, policies, and procedures were followed,” Ray Viada, an attorney the city hired to handle the issue, said in an emailed statement. “The city continues to do all it can to help residents who suffered damage from Hurricane Harvey to recover with a combination of local, state and federal assistance. It is unfortunate that threatened litigation is a distraction from those efforts.”

Emails between city officials, the original landowner and an engineering firm involved in the project — obtained by Johnson under the Texas Public Information Act — don’t demonstrate whether the project had any influence on Kabiri’s recommendation to revert to the old maps.

When Kabiri, who is now the city manager, first briefed the council on the map issue in October, he noted that even the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which administers flood insurance, did not recognize the 2007 maps for the purpose of issuing flood policies in Friendswood. That was one reason city staff concluded homeowners shouldn’t be forced to elevate under the 2007 standards, Kabiri said.

That doesn’t satisfy Phil Ratisseau, a retired chemical plant worker who ran for council and lost in May, and whose home two miles downstream of the Westover site took on three feet of water.

“Not once did they mention anything about developers at city council meetings,” Ratisseau said. “All they kept saying was they did this to allow citizens to rebuild their homes.”

Regardless of the intent, the result is the same: Because the city adopted older maps, the Westover site is no longer technically in the floodway, even though more advanced maps, created in 2007 with laser-mapped topography and newer rainfall data, show that it is.

Arledge, the Westover partner, said he wasn’t aware of the differences between the 1999 and 2007 flood maps.

Johnson and other concerned residents will urge the council to re-adopt the 2007 maps to prevent further development of flood-prone areas.

The floodway is the area of swiftly flowing water at the center of the flood plain, the area inundated in a rainfall that has a 1 percent chance of occurring in a given year. Structures in the floodway cause the overall flood level to rise, and force water to pile up behind the obstacle, like a dam.

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Johnson discovered the dirt trucked to the Westover site was coming from a nearby excavation that is part of a Harris County Flood Control District project, the South Belt Stormwater Detention Basin. He marveled at why the district, which recognizes the 2007 maps, would allow its dirt to end up in a floodway.

“We made an honest mistake,” said Matthew Zeve, the district’s director of operations.

The district requires its contractors to disclose what they plan to do with excavated dirt, so that the dirt doesn’t end up back in the flood plain. In this case, the contractor, submitting plans to dump dirt at the Westover location, used paperwork showing the 1999 flood maps. The district engineer who signed off on the plan didn’t consult the 2007 maps, Zeve said.

“Staff looked at it. It said it’s not in the flood plain,” Zeve said. “They checked that box.”

As much as 150,000 cubic yards was placed on the site, according to city records, raising it by about two feet. It’s higher in some areas, Johnson said.

After nearby residents brought it to the district’s attention, the district sought permission from then-landowner Robert Wood to remove the dirt at the district’s expense. He declined, Zeve said. Wood declined to comment for this story.

The district then offered to buy out the entire property as part of its ongoing efforts to acquire flood-prone lands. Wood sought more than $10 million, well beyond the district’s budget for such purchases, Zeve said.

The district is now exploring its legal options, he said, adding that regardless of what happens to the dirt, he plans to mitigate it by excavating elsewhere within the watershed.

“If he tries to develop the land … he’s probably not going to be able to get plans approved by Harris County Flood Control because we’re going to say you’re putting fill in the floodway,” Zeve said.

Fill dirt in the floodway is prohibited under county rules. Any project that affects drainage into a county waterway requires district approval. Clear Creek is a southern border of Harris County.

City records show that Wood’s permit to place fill dirt on his property was signed by a city official in November — a month before city council reverted to the 1999 maps. If that’s the case, the city should have rejected it because it was still in the floodway under the maps in effect at the time, Johnson argues. City regulations also prohibit fill in the floodway.

Johnson and other residents also object on environmental grounds. They’re worried the dirt could be contaminated because it was excavated near a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site, where the defunct Brio Refining Inc. dumped toxic materials from 1950 to 1982. A neighborhood and its school had to be abandoned.

Soil and water sampling by the flood control district at the Stormwater detention site near Brio showed toxic metals including arsenic and lead, but at concentrations no higher than typical background levels for Texas. The district’s environmental consultant concluded there had been no contamination from Brio.

Johnson worries the sampling wasn’t sufficient and wants to independently test the dirt at the Westover site.

He said he and other residents are rejecting the old notion that unchecked growth is inevitable. They join people elsewhere in the region who are increasingly skeptical that builders can engineer their way out of floods, instead favoring policies that reserve open spaces for public use and, critically, for the discharge of floodwaters.

In April, groups concerned about flooding heavily objected to the Houston City Council’s approval of plans to build homes in a flood plain on the site of a former golf course.

“People are on high alert these days and researching the issues,” Johnson said. “I am glad folks are paying attention and taking steps to protect themselves and their property.”

mark.collette@chron.com

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