![]() “It was very emotional because so much had been put in to get this started,” says Bouleau.Īt first the worst of the rains passed and water had not seeped in. If we don’t invest in resilience infrastructure then we are at risk – will people invest here? Tory GattisĪfter all the 16-hour days, weekends and evenings spent launching her business, Bonjour & Bienvenue was wrecked by over two feet of water. Victims of the floodĭuring Harvey, Axelle Bouleau had to watch via a security camera feed as the flood waters rose in Bonjour & Bienvenue, a French language centre in a strip mall west of the Barker reservoir. “They should never have allowed people to build so close to the bayou,” says Chadwick. But a few months ago, it was not untypical to find residents living among salvaged possessions in rooms with stripped-out floors and walls, or a For Sale sign lying in a puddle. Yet these wealthy residential neighbourhoods, barely visible from the water’s edge above steep grassy berms, were some of the most devastated when the deluge came at the end of August.ĭriving around, it looks as though normality has returned. I meet Chadwick on the bayou’s south bankon a sunny Sunday morning, and in this particular section, 15 miles west of downtown, it is a secluded and idyllic scene: blue sky visible through a canopy of trees, little noise apart from the puffing of occasional joggers and cyclists and the gurgling of turbid waters, perhaps hiding turtles, alligators, snakes, catfish and river otters. ![]() It was a place you’d pave over,” she says. “People don’t come here for the nature experience – never did. The notion that Houston could be pretty as well as practical came relatively recently to a city where a climate-controlled tunnel system links 95 blocks so that office workers need not venture outside. “Previous generations understood that you came here to make money and that was it,” says Susan Chadwick, executive director of Save Buffalo Bayou, a local advocacy group. The alternative, Blackburn adds, is “we do nothing and frankly begin to see the economic decline” of this oil and gas hub, where there’s growing scrutiny of the rapacious development – and accompanying jobs – that once meant a chance of the American dream for so many.Īfter Harvey, will families and workplaces be safe the next time the rains come?
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