A symposium on flooding and storm surge protection for the Houston Ship Channel scheduled for Wednesday evening has been canceled… by today’s heavy storms and local flooding.

“It is sort of funny, I guess,” chuckled Houston District E Councilman David Martin, a co-organizer of the event.

At-large councilman David Robinson, also a co-organizer, dove deep into his dictionary to determine canceling the event wasn’t ironic, as many have joked online, but paradoxical. He said he was keeping a good nature about the cancellation, while recognizing just how important dealing with deluges has become in the region.

“This is the hazard of life in southern Texas and life on the bayou,” Robinson said.

The gathering of engineering and hydrology experts was set for this evening at the George R. Brown Convention Center. With a flurry of flooded roads Wednesday and the specter of more storms, officials pulled the plug on the event after consulting with other sponsors and attendees, including Houston’s flood “czar,” former councilman Stephen Costello and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett.

Robinson and Martin said the event will be rescheduled.

The symposium was meant to address many of the recent concerns related to flooding, storm management and even the threat of a hurricane or tropical storm pulling millions of gallons out of Galveston Bay and shooting across a populated coastal part of the region like an enormous pressure washer.

Wednesday’s rains were a less-violent reminder of how much a storm can strike at Houston’s infrastructure, including roads. Though early assessments do not indicate today’s storm was as strong as those that walloped the area Memorial Day weekend of 2015 and mid-April of 2016, the same issue of filled bayous and channels led to standing water on streets, complicating trips.

In some of the worst flooded spots on Wednesday, freeway travelers were stranded waiting for low areas to clear. Danny Perez, spokesman for the Texas Department of Transportation, said often the water takes time to drain because pumps installed to get rid of the water are trying to force the water into full bayous, meaning the water can’t go anywhere.

Costello’s task is to correct some of those pervasive problems. City officials recently approved $10 million to begin work on minor fixes which could remedy some of the issues related to drainage and culverts. Robinson on Wednesday called it a step in the right direction, but many larger and more complex challenges lie ahead.

“I don’t think there is any lack of political will or resource that is putting projects off,” he said. “The ‘but’ here is we have to realize there are limited resources and we can’t do all the things that political leaders have had in mind for half a century… There is a process and it is tricky and involves choices.”

Swamped: Explore Houston's floodplains Type in an address to see if it's located in a floodplain.

Martin agreed prioritization is needed, but so is a realistic understanding of how the entire Houston area handles stormwater or doesn't. He noted Kingwood, where Martin resides and the northernmost area of his large district that stretches to Clear Lake, has newer pipes and culverts than older neighborhoods, and typically does not flood.

When it has, Martin said, the rising water has come from north and west of Kingwood. He said the rapid development of southern Montgomery County has – he believes – contributed to Kingwood’s drainage demand.

“Before you had trees and land and now you have concrete and steel,” Martin said of the neighboring areas.

Regionally, he said more cooperation is needed so counties and municipalities are not just pushing their problems downstream, symbolically as well as actually further down drainage channels.

“We have to work together as a multi-county area,” he said.

If there’s a silver lining to the clouds that opened over Houston, flooding roads and canceling the symposium, it’s that it happened sooner rather than later.

“We talked about that at lunch today,” Martin said. “Thank God this isn’t coming Feb. 5.”

He said Houston changing its plans for the upcoming Super Bowl because of flooding would have been disastrous.

Officials have contingency plans for emergencies on Super Bowl Sunday, including detour routes for transit, said Jerome Gray, spokesman for Metropolitan Transit Authority. In the event some roads are flooded, officials have backup routes and would adjust to them as needed. Detours for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo held each March operate in a similar manner, Gray said.

“I am confident that based on what happened today whatever Super Bowl plans we have are getting a second look to see what we can do,” Gray said. “If there’s something better we can do.”

Even with plans, however, weather can waylay the festivities. Martin noted Dallas endured problems and some ridicule after ice storms stymied some of its Super Bowl XLV activities in 2011.

“I am glad it came today and I’m praying for sunshine on Feb. 2, 3 ,4 and 5,” Martin said. “The last thing we can have is an event like this. That would be embarrassing and the opposite of the message we want to send when we have the eyes of the world on us.”