Groundwater in The News

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October 14, 2022 

Houston Chronicle staff writer Michael Garcia goes on a fault tour with Laura Norton - developer of this website. 

This article mentions the 12 million dollar project that 5 Woodlands MUDs have funded to stop flooding in the Cochran's Crossing Bowl

Micheal and Laura toured repaired road damage from the Panther Branch fault to the Jones fault and interviewed a couple of residents whose homes straddle the faults.

ReduceFlooding.com is hosted by Bob Rehak, a retired Kingwood resident that has dedicated all his resources and extraordinary abilities to reducing flooding in our region.  His journalism is of the highest quality, his research second to none.

Bob has posted many articles on the subject of our water wars; here's his insightful reporting on the actions of the Lone Star board to delay Phase 2 of their subsidence study was spot on. 

More recently he's summarized the work of UH  scientists

The Conroe Courier's Catherine Dominguez broke the recent story regarding the City of Conroe's proposal to lay out the red carpet for Niagra Bottling Company. 

https://www.yourconroenews.com/neighborhood/moco/news/article/Conroe-deal-would-allow-county-s-water-supply-16115232.php

Her article created quite a stir and generated much public comment; two days later she penned this follow-up article. https://www.yourconroenews.com/neighborhood/moco/news/article/Conroe-defers-groundwater-lease-for-water-16121981.php

Duke Coon is right, this is wrong for Conroe

And on August 2, 2019 Catherine Dominguez listed economic damages caused by fault activation

https://www.yourconroenews.com/neighborhood/moco/news/article/New-study-links-aquifer-pumping-to-fault-line-14276699.php

Community Impact, a favorite of many with its rich graphics, charts and quotes doesn't disappoint with its coverage of the groundwater debate.  In this article, Eva Vigh does a great job of describing both sides of the issue

At about 4 minutes into this radio show a UH professor is interviewed about subsidence in our area.

As an example the Baytown Nature Center, old site of an upper middle class neighborhood called Brownwood sunk 10 feet from subsidence and in 1983 it was deemed not livable.  That's why it's a nature center now.

On May 25, 2021 The NY Times listed our Houston Galveston area aquifers at risk for subsidence from over production.  This link

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/us/corcoran-california-sinking.html?smid=em-share requires a Times subscription while the Jet Propulsion Laboratory link below is informative and free.

California’s San Joaquin Valley is ground-zero for subsidence due to unsustainable groundwater pumping.  Most groundwater is used to irrigate crops in the valley, supporting a multi-billion dollar per year farming industry.  The following link will take you to a news release from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory about the use of satellite radar data to identify areas of high subsidence:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-data-show-californias-san-joaquin-valley-still-sinking

Lessons learned from this area can be applied to understand subsidence due to pumping from the Gulf Coast Aquifer in our area.  As the JPL co-author Cathleen Jones notes, “being able to pinpoint where subsidence is happening helps water resource managers determine why it is happening.”  Groundwater managers in Montgomery County need to have similar studies conducted here, and not just rely on sparse GPS station measurements.  However, the question is: will they?