Harris County and the Houston-Galveston Area Council were awarded a total of more than $10 million in federal grant funding for transportation infrastructure initiatives that aim to combat flooding and other effects of climate change, according to an announcement Thursday by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Harris County, which includes most of Houston and is one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation, will receive more than $9.6 million to develop a master plan evaluating drainage infrastructure capacity and roadway deficiencies in unincorporated parts of the county, the Department of Transportation said. The federal agency added that the county’s plan will target areas where road and land development have intensified in recent decades and where proactive mitigation actions, in anticipation of expected growth, are “relatively affordable.”
The Department of Transportation said the Houston-Galveston Area Council, a regional association of local governments that determines how to allocate funding sources for initiatives such as flood mitigation and transportation infrastructure, is being awarded $1.1 million to create a resilience improvement plan for a surface transportation system serving eight counties. Among other things, the plan will create a list of priority improvements for both the short and long term and include a risk-based assessment of vulnerabilities to transportation assets such as roadways, culverts, ditches and medians.
“Every community in America knows the impacts of climate change and extreme weather, including increasingly frequent heavy rain and flooding events across the country and the sea-level rise that is inundating infrastructure in coastal states,” Shailen Bhatt of the Federal Highway Administration said in a news release from the Department of Transportation. “This investment from the Biden-Harris Administration will ensure our infrastructure is built to withstand more frequent and unpredictable extreme weather, which is vitally important for people and businesses that rely on roads and bridges being open to keep our economy moving.”
The Houston-Galveston Area Council did not immediately comment on its award.
The Harris County Engineering Department, which applied for the grant funding, said it will engage both county residents and the county’s elected commissioners in putting together its Countywide Stormwater Drainage Master Plan. Included in that effort will be outreach initiatives to disadvantaged communities within the county, according to the department.
“The Countywide Stormwater Drainage Master Plan is a critical project to Harris County because of the significant disaster threat due to flooding and significant challenge for road safety,” Harris County Engineer Milton Rahman said. “The study will propose solutions and create a list of high-impact projects to improve flood resiliency and safety for Harris County residents.”
The two Houston-area entities were among five in Texas that received a total of $26 million through the Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-saving Transportation (PROTECT) grant program, which was part of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure law passed by Congress in 2021. Nationwide, a total of 80 projects were selected to receive nearly $830 million, according to the Department of Transportation.
Summers in Houston have gotten hotter and more extreme since 1970, according to data released last year by the nonprofit organization Climate Central. The city recorded its hottest summer on record in 2023.
And the sea level along the Gulf Coast, which is about 50 miles southeast of Houston, is rising at an unprecedented rate, according to two peer-reviewed scientific studies published last year in Nature Communications and the Journal of Climate.
The Houston area has experienced six federally declared…
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