COULD HARRIS COUNTY SAVE UP SOME FLOODWATER FOR WHEN IT’S REALLY NEEDED? 
Finding a way to stockpile floodwater during years of plenty, commissioner Jack Cagle tells Mihir Zaveri this week, might not only help to make more water available for use during Houston’s drought years. It might also be a way to check the Houston region’s tendency for subsidence (that slow, permanent sinking that can happen when groundwater is pulled out of Houston’s soft clay layers too quickly). Or maybe, Zaveri adds, it could be used to help keep seawater from being sucked into aquifers as fresh water gets sucked out the other side — as long as doing so didn’t accidentally contaminate those same aquifers with junk from the surface. Who knows? Nobody, yet — but the county commissioners have given the $160,000 okay to a study team to shed light on whether it would be possible, feasible, or advisible for Harris County to pump floodwater underground for storage during major storms. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Meyerland flooding on Tax Day 2016: Tamara Fish
Sign up for the Newsletter
“….Or maybe it could be used to help keep seawater from being sucked into aquifers as fresh water gets sucked out the other side ….”
It just doesn’t work that way in hydrology. The aquifer formation collapses as the reservoir pressure is lowered by water withdrawal, and eventually it is blocked off by loss of permeability. In case you meant a fresh water zone above a salt water zone in the same horizon they just plain don’t use them as withdrawal will “cone” the salt water into the well. Nice try though….
Article says that study will cost $160,000, not $160 million.
Ack! Thanks Gisgo, we’ve corrected the text.
We do have a salt dome and an Astrodome adjacent to flood prone neighborhoods. Perhaps one or both of those domes could hold the extra water.
@memebag The salt dome adjacent to the astrodome was recently converted into an oil storage facility
@juancarlos31: Yup. Luckily oil and water don’t mix, so we can store both there, right?
just don’t open the dam at the barker reservoir.
Isn’t this what Meyerland is for?