White Oak Bayou Regional Detention Basins – Harris County Flood Control District

Houston Texas

LAN designed two separate detention facilities in northwest Harris County as part of a larger facility-sponsored project to reduce flooding. The two sites total 65 acres and contain several groves of mature oak trees. The design includes a curvilinear basin layout to reduce peak flows and offset impacts associated with adjacent channel improvements. In addition, desirable trees were preserved to provide an aesthetically pleasing geomorphologic design.

The basin design incorporates varying side slopes, with the bottom of the basin containing a permanent water quality feature. The stormwater quality portion is located below the effective storm storage elevation, allowing wetlands to be established to improve water quality. Hydrologic and hydraulic analysis modeled several weir configurations to optimize weir size and elevation and outflow pipe size for each basin. The inflow weir structure design is based on hydraulic modeling results from an unsteady HEC-RAS model of White Oak Bayou. The unsteady HEC-RAS model includes proposed channel improvements and other proposed detention facilities. The proposed model results were compared to existing conditions and confirm no downstream impacts will be caused by the flood wave propagation through the proposed improvements.

At a glance

65 acres

$4.8 million project cost

Features

Aesthetically pleasing, geomorphologic design

Permanent water quality features

Tree preservation

Services

Stormwater Management

Client

Harris County Flood Control District

Related Work

Stormwater and Drainage

Stormwater Management