HOUSTON – Nearly nine years after Hurricane Harvey flooded thousands of homes near the Addicks and Barker reservoirs, property owners involved in a yearslong legal battle with the federal government are still waiting for compensation.
A federal court ruled the government was liable for flooding private property upstream of the reservoirs. That decision was largely upheld on appeal in December 2025.
The government now has until Sept. 4 to decide whether to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. Even if it does not, attorneys say more work will be required before most homeowners receive any money.
For homeowner Gary Cravens, the wait has already lasted far longer than he ever imagined.
“I knew it would take a while, but I never thought it’d be nine years,” Cravens said. “And you know, nine to 10 years of your life, that’s almost a decade of your life.”
A home that had never flooded
Cravens said his family had lived in its west Houston home for nearly three decades without experiencing a flood.
When Harvey hit in August 2017, the Cajun Navy evacuated Cravens and his family. He said water had not yet entered the home when they left. When he returned days later, he discovered more than a foot of water had flooded the property.
“It was just a depressed state,” Cravens said. “It was just a depressed day. It was, it was just chaos everywhere out here.”
Cravens said he received some money from insurance companies and limited assistance from FEMA, but nothing through the lawsuit against the federal government. He said he continues to deal with electrical and structural problems that he believes were caused by the flooding.
“If I get compensated, I’d like to really redo all the electrical to make sure it’s right,” Cravens said.
Why the government was found liable
Cravens is among thousands of property owners involved in what are known as the upstream Addicks and Barker cases.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operates the Addicks and Barker dams to reduce flooding downstream along Buffalo Bayou and through Houston.
During Harvey, the dams held back massive amounts of rainwater. However, the federal government did not own all the land that could be covered when the reservoirs filled. As water accumulated, it spread beyond federally owned land and flooded private property upstream.
“There are two they’re effectively detention ponds, if you think of it. You know, just on a larger scale,” attorney Daniel Charest said. “When they were built originally, the government took the decision to not buy all of the land that their dams would fill.”
Charest, a partner at Burns Charest LLP, is one of the co-lead attorneys for the upstream cases. Brian Beckcom, a founding partner of Houston-based VB Attorneys, represents a group of upstream claimants and serves on the case’s leadership committee.
The upstream litigation is separate from the downstream cases, which focus on water released through the dams and into Buffalo Bayou.
Upstream homeowners argued that the government used their private property to store water and therefore took a property right. Under the Fifth Amendment, the government may take private property for public use, but it must provide compensation.
“The United States Constitution says the government can take your property, but they have to pay you for it. It’s the Fifth Amendment. It’s called eminent domain,” Beckcom said.
Homeowners won. Why haven’t they been paid?
The court did not attempt to try thousands of claims at the same time. Instead, it selected 13 representative properties, known as bellwether cases, for the liability phase.
In 2019, a federal judge ruled the government was liable. Six representative properties then moved through a compensation trial. In 2022, the court awarded those property owners a combined approximately $455,000, plus interest.
The federal government appealed. In December 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit largely upheld the finding that the government was liable. The court sent limited portions of the compensation decision back to the lower court for additional consideration.
“We won on liability. We won on the ticket. And then that went on appeal to the Federal Circuit, which is in DC. It sat in appeal for almost two years before there was a ruling,” Charest said.
The government now has the option to ask the Supreme Court to hear the case. Unlike the first appeal, Supreme Court review is not automatic. The justices must first agree to take the case.
“The government has asked for one more extension to decide whether they’re going to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court or not,” Beckcom said. “So we’re in a position now. Nobody’s been paid, but the government is finally talking about settlement, which is hasn’t been the case for seven years.”
What happens next?
If the government does not seek Supreme Court review by Sept. 4, or if the Supreme Court declines to hear the case, attorneys say the next step will be determining how the bellwether decisions should apply to the remaining upstream claims.
Attorneys for the homeowners and the government have discussed creating a settlement formula. It could consider factors such as a home’s value, square footage, depth of flooding and extent of damage.
Beckcom said a formula could keep homeowners from having to produce individual receipts for belongings and documents that may have been destroyed.
“There may be a framework or a formula by which everybody will get paid, and they won’t have to produce a bunch of stuff that they don’t have because it got destroyed by the government in the flood in the first place,” Beckcom said.
However, the Sept. 4 deadline would not mean every homeowner immediately receives a check.
The bellwether plaintiffs would be first in line, subject to the remaining compensation issues before the lower court. Thousands of other property owners would still need to establish whether their claims qualify and how much compensation they should receive.
No final timeline has been established.
“Waiting on us to die”
Cravens is now 70. He said many people in his neighborhood are older and that two of his neighbors have died since Harvey.
“At times I get thoughts if being a senior citizen, they just waiting on us to die,” Cravens said. “And 10 years or a decade of your life, even if you’re young, that’s a lot of your lives. You only live once.”
Charest said he does not believe the government is deliberately waiting for the homeowners to die. However, he said the history of the Addicks and Barker reservoirs shows a pattern of delaying difficult decisions.
“I don’t think the government is waiting for people to die. I don’t think it’s that Machiavellian,” Charest said. “I do think that if you look at the history of Addicks and Barker there, they knew that this was going to happen eventually. They knew that they would have to pay. And there’s a long history of, like kicking the can down the road until somebody else has to pay for it, right. Some other administration, some other, you know, commandant of the Marine Corps, whatever it is, no one really wants to, that I’ve seen yet, step up and show leadership and resolve this.”
Attorneys said the length of the case is frustrating, but not unusual for large flooding claims against the federal government.
“There are still Hurricane Katrina cases going on today,” Beckcom said. “So I know this sounds insane, but we pushed this as fast as we could possibly push it. And this is about as good as we can do. So we’re real close to victory. But it is, it is definitely a marathon and not a sprint.”
Interest continues to accrue on qualifying compensation awards as the litigation continues.
Still, Charest said the homeowners have already waited long enough.
“It is time for the government to step up and do the right thing for these people,” Charest said. “I always tell folks, our clients and everyone upstream like, y’all saved Houston.”
KPRC 2 asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers whether the federal government plans to seek Supreme Court review. The Corps declined to comment because of the ongoing litigation and referred questions to the U.S. Department of Justice.
KPRC 2 also contacted the Justice Department but had not received a response at the time of publication.
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