Flood Plains

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backhoeboogie

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People build on the Brazos Flood plain and we tell them not to. They do it anyway. About once every 5 years they get wiped out. Usually it is just small cabins and such. The Mississippi floods and national news shows houses and businesses up and down the Mississippi getting flooded - They built on a flood plain! What do you expect?

In New Orleans they build under the sea level. Duh???

Now I am seeing houses on the flood plain getting washed out by Hurricane Sandy. Complete houses floating away. These were not achored? I don't live on a flood plain and mine is anchored to the T.

When you were a child your heard "a wise man built his house upon the rock" and it told you a story. Does it not apply to this?
 
Don't get me started. I'm on a flood plain. 100 yr flood plain. There's never been a drop of floodwater on the part my house is on since at least 1966 but there is yearly flooding on the far east pasture. When I started building, the county said they wouldn't issue a permit till I got an elevation certificate stating what my grade was above sealevel. They wouldn't accept the USGS elevation for my GPS coordinate, that I got online. They couldn't tell me how high I needed to build off the ground either--said the surveyor would do that when he ran the elevation survey. Ok--I paid $500 for the local guy the county reccomended to come run the elev survey. When he finally got up to the house from shooting back from the nearest known elevation (the river bridge) I asked him what the elevation was. He told me--it was exactly what USGS had stated. Then I asked how high the finished 1st floor had to to be and he sez:
"I have no idea--how high does the water get?" I told him what the permit office said and he told me that
FEMA has never set a Base Flood Elevation for my river E. Fork San Jacinto, and the permit office was full of feces and that NOBODY knew how high the water gets anywhere on the river.
I sez=Well, you gotta put something down or I can't build, so he pulled a # out of the air and now I have a house sitting 5 feet up on pilings and out $500, trading a non-existant flood risk for a very real wind hazzard next time a Hurricane Ike decides to come thru.
Scroll down and you can see the pics/
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=73764&start=615
 
We get fires. We get tornadoes. We also get people with the 100 year flood markers on the Brazos flood plain. Not much of a concern during drought. They are going to lose. 10 year from now or 100 (if it really takes that long). Could be next year or next week.

I love the river. I love my river property. I would never build on the upper flood plain, let alone the lower flood plain. Water has never been on the upper flood plain since Possum Kingdom lake went in back in the 40's.

I won't even leave a tractor parked on the flood plain during drought. Your decision makes no sense to me.
 
In the 60s people sued the city of san diego to be allowed to build in the river bed and on the side of steep canyons. Then they had the gall to sue the city for allowing them to build there when the river flooded and the houses slid down the sides of the canyons.
 
I have a house on a lake that was flooded in the 90's. Did a lot of damage to it. Not because I was in a flood plain but because the people living in the flood plain below the dam were minorities and the wonderful Rev. Jackson claimed that the power company was intentionally flooding this drug infested crime laden neighborhood because of who they were so the power company was forced to stop releasing the water. This backed up water flooded my home which is on a hill and 10 foot above the high water line. The dam couldn't take the pressure and burst and wiped out all these homes they tried to save. The gov't went in and bulldozed everything down and built a park then built them new homes leaving us to fend for ourselves. You gotta love true christians like Rev. Jackson. Oh, even last week I saw commercial requesting donations to help them out.

This is a prime example of why its never good to allow politics to over-ride common sense and facts.

And no, I didn't have flood insurance because I didn't qualify.
 
backhoeboogie":10sof37y said:
We get fires. We get tornadoes. We also get people with the 100 year flood markers on the Brazos flood plain. Not much of a concern during drought. They are going to lose. 10 year from now or 100 (if it really takes that long). Could be next year or next week.

I love the river. I love my river property. I would never build on the upper flood plain, let alone the lower flood plain. Water has never been on the upper flood plain since Possum Kingdom lake went in back in the 40's.

I won't even leave a tractor parked on the flood plain during drought. Your decision makes no sense to me.
I don't know what part of the Brazos Valley you live in, but If I was situated on a river with 45,000 sq mile drainage basin and at 1300 mile length, I would probably feel the same way. My little river right now after raining all day yesterday, you can just about jump accross and with only 69 miles long from headwater to where it joins the west fork only has a drainage basin of 338 sq miles. I did a lot of reasearch since USGS/FEMA have no flood elevations set for Federal Flood insurance purposes and found that the historical USGS records for this river's flood record is 135.5 ft above sea level which was set in 1994. The previous record was in the 40s, and only 1/2 foot less, and those are directly from USGS--records kept since 1900. Both the River bridge elevation 8 miles downstream from me and the official elevation of the City of Cleveland Texas is 150.2' above sea level--neither have ever seen floodwater on them since records have been kept dating back to the 1880s. I am at 172.6 ft above sea level, meaning for my house or shop to flood, water would have to crest at a height almost 40' higher than ever recorded in history. That, isn't a 100 or 500 yr flood--that's a 1000 year+ flood and it will make international news.
 
greybeard":h86vee7w said:
backhoeboogie":h86vee7w said:
We get fires. We get tornadoes. We also get people with the 100 year flood markers on the Brazos flood plain. Not much of a concern during drought. They are going to lose. 10 year from now or 100 (if it really takes that long). Could be next year or next week.

I love the river. I love my river property. I would never build on the upper flood plain, let alone the lower flood plain. Water has never been on the upper flood plain since Possum Kingdom lake went in back in the 40's.

I won't even leave a tractor parked on the flood plain during drought. Your decision makes no sense to me.
I don't know what part of the Brazos Valley you live in, but If I was situated on a river with 45,000 sq mile drainage basin and at 1300 mile length, I would probably feel the same way. My little river right now after raining all day yesterday, you can just about jump accross and with only 69 miles long from headwater to where it joins the west fork only has a drainage basin of 338 sq miles. I did a lot of reasearch since USGS/FEMA have no flood elevations set for Federal Flood insurance purposes and found that the historical USGS records for this river's flood record is 135.5 ft above sea level which was set in 1994. The previous record was in the 40s, and only 1/2 foot less, and those are directly from USGS--records kept since 1900. Both the River bridge elevation 8 miles downstream from me and the official elevation of the City of Cleveland Texas is 150.2' above sea level--neither have ever seen floodwater on them since records have been kept dating back to the 1880s. I am at 172.6 ft above sea level, meaning for my house or shop to flood, water would have to crest at a height almost 40' higher than ever recorded in history. That, isn't a 100 or 500 yr flood--that's a 1000 year+ flood and it will make international news.
Stranger things have happened. A couple of years ago a river just east of us crested 75 feet above it's normal flow.
 
dun,Not sure where you are exactly located but my dad used to have property on the buffalo river, and once every ten years or so it gets scary high
 
Did you guys hear about the big costume contest for halloween this year? New York won, they went dressed up like New Orleans.
 
cow pollinater":3uvaoq1b said:
Did you guys hear about the big costume contest for halloween this year? New York won, they went dressed up like New Orleans.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
 
Natural floodplains are the most fertile soils on earth. If people hadn't learned to settle on them there would be no civilization as we know it.
Here where I'm at, EVERYTHING is a floodplain. We don't get enough rain to ever really flood much but we feed the world with runnoff nutrients from the mountains above us so I think the good far outweighs the risk.
 
cow pollinater":bkw15grv said:
Natural floodplains are the most fertile soils on earth. If people hadn't learned to settle on them there would be no civilization as we know it.
Here where I'm at, EVERYTHING is a floodplain. We don't get enough rain to ever really flood much but we feed the world with runnoff nutrients from the mountains above us so I think the good far outweighs the risk.
For agriculture flood plains are great, as a place to build a house it sucks. Even the egyptians knew that in distant history
 
dun":2s5t57d2 said:
cow pollinater":2s5t57d2 said:
Natural floodplains are the most fertile soils on earth. If people hadn't learned to settle on them there would be no civilization as we know it.
Here where I'm at, EVERYTHING is a floodplain. We don't get enough rain to ever really flood much but we feed the world with runnoff nutrients from the mountains above us so I think the good far outweighs the risk.
For agriculture flood plains are great, as a place to build a house it sucks. Even the egyptians knew that in distant history

Maybe the Egyptians need to explain that to all these people that build these high dollar homes on the sand dunes at the beach.
 
i guess there is a danger no matter where you live. tornadoes. fires, floods earthquakes hurricanes snow and ice. or in the big cities where crime is so bad you are not safe walking down the street.and it is only gonna get worse.
 
greybeard":26ij1zk0 said:
I am at 172.6 ft above sea level, meaning for my house or shop to flood, water would have to crest at a height almost 40' higher than ever recorded in history. That, isn't a 100 or 500 yr flood--that's a 1000 year+ flood and it will make international news.

I hope you are not taking anything personal.

You have people who live on land near Dallas. They have never seen water in 100 years. Some devloper comes in and builds a housing division near them. All the roof lines, all the concrete, all the pavement. It comes a 3 inch rain and now none of the effluent can even get to the soil. It all becomes run-off and old homes get flooded by a simple drainage ditch.

Look at the Trinity. Everything that falls out of the sky goes there for thousands of acres. It used to not be that way.

If people start building developments near you Greybeard, I would become extremely concerned.

Cow pollinator: Yes it is extremely fertile. Nothing less than awesome for growing. Also an irrigation source in drought. Huge advantages. I would like to live in the middle of it but don't.
 
I never take much internet stuff personal BHB--we're just chewin the fat here about differnt kinds of stuff.
I'm in the middle of a national forest--gonna be hard for anything to get developed around here. This is a sat view of my place before I built a house or barn:
bigpicsmall.jpg

You're looking down at the tops of big mature pine trees, with the river bridge barely visible as a white dash on the highway. River runs top to bottom--you kinda have to follow the different shade of the trees to even know where it is in that pic--. My house and the outbuildings are located on the far mid left of the cleared out area. Ponds clearly visible. It ain't much, but it's home till the Big Guy calls me home.
 
Most times, for me and my wife, too much heat and humidity and not enough sunshine TB. Before I moved back here, we lived out near San Angelo from '95-2005 on the Concho. I preferred that kind of country over what I had here, so I tried to get rid of as many trees as I could over the last few years. Before 2006, 80% of my place looked just like all the rest of that pic above--solid trees. A storm or flood may take me, but by gawd I want to at least be able to see it comin'.
 
here we can flood about anywhere, even on the mountain...years ago they where built close to the river for convenience, travel, grist mills. industry, one reason or the other.. our old home as kids. a pro could throw a rock from our back yard to the river...
 

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