As Fort Bend county continues to recover from flooding brought about by Hurricane Harvey, their respective governing bodies are weighing options to mitigate flooding and meet modern drainage standards. Fort Bend County officials are considering the creation of a flood control district, but that idea is in its infancy, according to the office of County Judge Robert Hebert. The county has a drainage district and 19 levee improvement districts, commonly referred to as LIDs. It also has several cities that handle their own water management as well as municipal utility districts, which help manage and improve drainage. The cost of maintenance Mark Vogler, chief engineer and general manager of the Fort Bend County Drainage District, explained that the difference between a drainage district and a flood control district is a drainage district maintains drainage and flood control assets that a county already has in place, while a flood control district maintains those assets and can build new infrastructure to prevent flooding and improve drainage. “Our annual [maintenance] budget for the county drainage channels we maintain is about $10 million,” Vogler said. “This includes bridges, water gates, vegetation control, pipes, swale ditches, desilting and erosion control among other things.” Fort Bend County’s LID 19 has a budget of roughly $748,000, while LID 15 has a budget of more than $2.4 million. LID 19’s budget includes $140,000 for levee maintenance, while LID 15 sets aside $101,000 for maintenance and operation of the new Alcorn Bayou pumping station. Drainage district staffers are stretched thin as well, after the 2016 Tax Day Floods damaged about 22 miles of Willow Fork Bayou, causing erosion and bank sloughing—soil falling in clumps— Vogler said. The county was still working on that when Harvey hit. “We’ve been working on repairing those and pretty much all over they’re re-sloughed now because of the high water and the quick drawdown on the river. So, we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Vogler said. An Oversight role Fort Bend County’s LIDs, MUDs and cities can also make drainage improvements. The drainage district interacts with each of these in different ways, Vogler said. The drainage district helps the LIDs with their continuing education programs and inspects the levees maintained by each LID to ensure they are up to standards established by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Meanwhile, the MUDs are largely self-regulated and are more independent, although the drainage district will assist them with continuing education upon request. Some MUDs create and maintain levees, which must meet the same standards as those operated by an LID, Vogler said. The drainage district also assists with planning by reviewing drainage designs for new development, according to the district’s website. The plans are reviewed by district staff and then submitted to the Commissioners Court for approval. This process prevents poorly planned developments from creating drainage hazards for current and future residents, he said. infrastructure codes outdated Dependence on other entities to make improvements has Fort Bend County relying on agricultural drainage standards from decades ago, Vogler said. “The county’s drainage district was started up back in 1950 when [the county] was predominantly agricultural, and most of the ditches were built to an agricultural capacity, which is 3 inches in 24 hours on cropland, and 2 inches in 24 hours on pastureland,” he said. According to Stephen Wilcox, a hydrology engineer with Costello Inc., a local engineering company that helps municipalities study and manage water drainage, the existing engineering standard for stormwater drainage is that it handle 12.4 inches of water in 24-hours. Fort Bend County is capable of adding drainage measures, Vogler said. However, when it does, it usually must pass a bond measure at the polls. Once approved, the project is then implemented through a contractor rather than by the district doing the work.