Councilman Dave Martin Hosts Information Meeting For Flooded Kingwood Residents

KINGWOOD, TX — Residents in Kingwood filled the Kingwood Community Center on Thursday night, hoping to get some answers from city leaders about the unprecedented flooding during Hurricane Harvey.

Houston City Councilman Dave Martin, who lives in Kingwood, and Mayor Sylvester Turner addressed a packed house of more than 300 area residents and provided information about possible next steps in the rebuilding process.

The meeting came roughly a month after flood waters breached the banks of the San Jacinto River and Cypress Creek, overtaking many suburban areas that had never flooded.(Want to get daily news updates and other events going on in your area? Sign up for the free Humble-Kingwood Patch morning newsletter.)

The flooding caused $10 million in damages to the Lone Star College-Kingwood campus, where six of the nine buildings were flooded with river water and raw sewage from a nearby water treatment facility.

RELATED: Kingwood High School Closed For 2017-18 School Year

Kingwood High School met the same fate, sustaining significant damage from flood waters as high as five feet in some areas of the school.

The catastrophic flooding forced Humble ISD to close Kingwood High School for the year and send those students to Summer Creek High School, and begin a year of staggered attendance between the two student bodies.

Meanwhile, Martin has indicated that the San Jacinto River Authority was responsible for the flooding when they released water from the Lake Conroe Dam, and told the crowd, “I'm on a mission and I will get these people,” KPRC reported.

The San Jacinto River Authority, which was among the entities listed in a lawsuit filed earlier this month by Kingwood residents, called some of the comments misleading and said in a statement that:

“Lake Conroe reduced the flooding around Lake Houston by reducing the peak flow going through Lake Conroe and into the West Fork of the San Jacinto River from 130,000 cfs to 79,000 cfs. That is approximately a 50,000 cfs reduction in the peak flows going down the river to Lake Houston.”

RELATED: Harvey Cleanup: Houston Debris Removal A Round-The-Clock Process

Officials believe it could take months, if not a year for the debris removal and rebuilding to be completed.

Image: Associated Press: Areas of Humble and Kingwood were completedly under water as a result of flooding from the San Jacinto River

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