{"id":823467,"date":"2026-05-26T14:56:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T14:56:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/823467\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T14:56:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T14:56:23","slug":"northern-parts-of-harris-county-would-see-biggest-impact-of-new-flood-maps-rice-researchers-say-houston-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/823467\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern parts of Harris County would see biggest impact of new flood maps, Rice researchers say \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"Flooding<\/a>Flooding in downtown Houston after Hurricane Harvey hit the region in August 2017.<\/p>\n

For every square mile of land that\u2019s being moved out of Harris County’s floodplains, roughly four miles have been added to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s draft map.<\/p>\n

That’s according to preliminary research conducted by Rice University and set to be published later this year. Researchers presented their initial findings at a conference late last week hosted by Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.<\/p>\n

“A home or an apartment that is going to be newly designated into the floodplain can impact perceived risk, future insurance burden, development decisions and long-term neighborhood stability,” Debolina Banerjee, a research analyst at Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, said at the conference.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Hello, Houston!<\/a> daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n

FEMA quietly released<\/a> the proposed map earlier this year. The map will undergo several revisions before it’s finalized. It marks the first major update to Harris County’s flood risk zones in nearly 20 years. A recent Houston Chronicle investigation<\/a> found that thousands of Houston homeowners could face increased costs from flood insurance requirements if their homes are moved into flood risk zones as outlined in the draft map.<\/p>\n

Rice researchers found that the proposed map adds 199 square miles to Harris County\u2019s floodplains \u2013 a 31% increase from the previous map. If the proposed map is adopted, it will result in a 36% increase in single-family homes inside the floodplains \u2014 including both the 500-year and 100-year floodplains. There would also be a 17% increase in multifamily homes inside the floodplains.<\/p>\n

Houston City Council District H would see a 144% increase in single-family homes added to the floodplains, according to the researchers.<\/p>\n

Harris County Precinct 3, which includes both northeast and northwest parts of the county, would see the largest increase in homes added to the floodplains out of any county precinct. The precinct would see a 103% increase in single-family homes in the floodplains and a 113% increase in multifamily homes in flood risk zones.<\/p>\n

Stephen Averill Sherman, a research scientist at the Kinder Institute, said Precinct 3 has a large amount of unincorporated areas where much of the infrastructure is handled by municipal utility districts.<\/p>\n

“A lot of these (districts) have kind of evolved over the years to be de facto general purpose governments, but still they don\u2019t necessarily have quite the same bonding and financing authority that a city government would have,” he said during the conference.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, other parts of Houston and the greater Harris County region would see a decrease in homes included in the floodplains. Harris County Precinct 4 would see a 4% decrease in single-family homes included in the floodplains. Houston City Council District F would see a 36% decrease in single-family homes in the floodplains.<\/p>\n

Developers have also been grappling with how to build in Houston to avoid flood risk.<\/p>\n

“I think that’s been one of the moving targets for everybody, for a long time,” Fletcher Dunson, vice president of construction materials company Sprint Sand and Clay, said during a panel at the conference.<\/p>\n

Harry Masterson, managing director at Ember Real Estate Investment and Development, said his team has already been planning around where they believe the new flood risk zones will be located.<\/p>\n

“You can follow all the rules, all the regulations, build exactly how you’re supposed to build, have five million stamps and signatures from the county and everybody else to say you’re doing it right and if it floods, you’re still hosed,” he said at the conference. “It’s the riskiest part of development, I think. So that is where you really don’t skimp.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flooding in downtown Houston after Hurricane Harvey hit the region in August 2017. For every square mile of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":823468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5130],"tags":[338412,338413,338414,746,30565,30566,8580,6386,4345,5173,291308,425,50,358,3187],"class_list":["post-823467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-100-year-flood-plain","tag-500-year-flood-plain","tag-baker-institute","tag-environment","tag-fema","tag-flood-maps","tag-flooding","tag-harris-county","tag-houston","tag-infrastructure","tag-kinder-institute","tag-local","tag-news","tag-texas","tag-tx"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116641463617661525","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}