For the past five years, the Greens Bayou Corridor Coalition has worked to develop parks and trails, improve flooding issues and promote economic development along the bayou.

With the master plan nearly completed for its portion of the 45-mile-long watershed, which stretches in a semi-circle from Hwy. 290 to the Houston Ship Channel, funding remains a priority.

Flooding is a major concern for the West Reach committee that covers the Northwest Houston section of the bayou from Hwy. 290 to Veterans Memorial Drive.

The coalition has made two trips to Washington over the last year to secure funding for a detention pond —a pond that holds water when streams and rivers overflow — near Veterans Memorial Drive, said Jill Boullion, executive director of the Greens Bayou Corridor Coalition.

In September, the coalition met with members of the House of Representatives and Senate that are on the appropriations committee as well as the Washington, D.C. office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The coalition needs $30 million for the project, the only one on Greens Bayou that must be funded federally with money coming from the president's office.

It hopes that his office will consider funding the detention pond in fiscal year 2013. In the meantime, smaller projects can be completed.

"We are very optimistic," Boullion said. "We opened a park in the Greenspoint area called Ida Gaye Gardens so we have a demonstration project on the ground. We have another park under construction in our South Reach, which will be our southern most trailhead for a paddle trail, and we have other ongoing projects."