HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — To help mitigate flooding, Harris County is considering large-scale projects, including going more than 100 feet below water to move water.<\/p>\n
For some neighbors along Halls Bayou, construction sounds come too frequently. Not because of new homes, but they’re having to rebuild.<\/p>\n
“We flooded in 2001, and we flooded in 2017,” Erik Lindsey explained.<\/p>\n
To help, Lindsey listed several ideas to Eyewitness News, including dredging and walls. One item he didn’t consider was a tunnel.<\/p>\n
“If you start digging tunnels and you’re moving earth from around then you’re going to lessen the strength I would think of the surrounding areas,” Lindsey explained.<\/p>\n
Over the last six years, the flood control district said it has spent $4.5 million studying tunnels. $300,000 from a federal grant, and the rest from county dollars.<\/p>\n
After studying soil and where tunnels could go, they’re working on a new study to get federal dollars. They call it the Solutions for Advancing Floodplain Evaluation and Resilience Study, also known as the SAFER study<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Two are under construction in Dallas,” Harris County Flood Control District chief partnerships and programs manager Scott Elmer said. “San Antonio has had one since 1987, and Austin has a tunnel as well.”<\/p>\n Officials said there could be 133 miles of tunnels that are upwards of 120 feet below ground. They’d move water from nearly half of the county’s watersheds to the ship channel.<\/p>\n “As the water rises in the channel, it would flow into the inlets into the tunnel, drop down through the shafts, and then flow via gravity out to the receiving stream,” Elmer explained.<\/p>\n Elmer said tunnels could mean they need to use eminent domain.<\/p>\n “In some cases, it is very possible that acquisition of properties could occur, but that has generally been such a smaller amount of acquisition than we see with our traditional methods,” Elmer said.<\/p>\n For example, Elmer said, a stormwater detention basin requires more than 1,800 acres of land to detain the water. A tunnel, he said, could accomplish the same thing with just 24 acres of land.<\/p>\n To give you an idea of how large they could be, Elmer said they’d be slightly smaller than the tunnels used for Memorial Park’s land bridge.<\/p>\n A project that wouldn’t be cheap. Officials say they’d cost more than $30 billion.<\/p>\n First, they need neighbor feedback. Elmer said the study will look at other options, including, if nothing is done, new buyout programs and traditional methods like detention basins.<\/p>\n Lindsey says he’s interested in tunnels, but wants to make sure it’s the best choice.<\/p>\n “If it is, I’m OK with it, but just to do something haphazardly, ‘Oh, this is a good idea.’ I don’t know about that one,” Lindsey said.<\/p>\n The flood control district has one final scheduled virtual meeting on Wednesday. After it develops options, officials said they plan to have more meetings.<\/p>\n They said the plan is to submit the study to the federal government in 2027 and to secure some funding by 2028.<\/p>\n For updates on this story, follow Nick Natario on Facebook<\/a>, X<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>. Copyright \u00a9 2025 KTRK-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n
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