Harris County, Houston Approve $56.9 Million Kingwood Flood Mitigation Project

The streets of Elm Grove and North Kingwood Forest went underwater twice in 2019, and up to 600 homes paid the price. Seven years later, the repair has a price tag, a contractor, and two government votes that together mark the most consequential structural commitment the Taylor Gully watershed has ever seen.

Harris County Commissioners Court awarded a $29.39 million construction contract to Brice Construction & Design LLC on March 31, and Houston City Council followed on April 7 with a $10 million appropriation and an interlocal agreement that formally binds the two governments to a shared delivery structure. Together the actions advance the Taylor Gully Channel Conveyance Improvements and Woodridge Stormwater Detention Basin project, ranked as the highest-priority structural fix in the Kingwood Drainage Analysis Study.

The work targets Taylor Gully along its course through northern Kingwood, from Kingwood Park High School toward White Oak Creek. Channel crews will deepen and concrete-line a portion of the gully to accelerate stormwater conveyance, and will replace the undersized twin culverts at Rustling Elms with a clear-span bridge. The larger piece of the project is a two-compartment, wet-bottom detention basin built on a 267-acre site near Woodland Hills Drive and Northpark Drive in Montgomery County, on land jointly owned by Harris County Flood Control District and the City of Houston. At completion, that basin will hold 1,127 acre-feet of stormwater, bringing the system to and beyond Atlas-14 rainfall standards.

That benchmark matters because the earlier detention basins Perry Homes built on the Woodridge Village site as a condition of its sale to HCFCD still fell roughly 40 percent short of Atlas-14 requirements, leaving Elm Grove, North Kingwood Forest, Mills Branch, Sherwood Trails, and Woodstream perpetually underprotected. The original problem traced to a developer's decision to clearcut approximately 270 acres on the Woodridge property starting in 2017, stripping the land of vegetation and sending uncontrolled runoff straight down Taylor Gully into those subdivisions.

The $56.9 million total draws primarily on federal Community Development Block Grant-Mitigation dollars: $41.94 million approved by the Texas General Land Office in October 2025. The remaining roughly $15 million comes from local and other sources, including the city's $10 million contribution. Because CDBG-MIT funds carry federal oversight requirements, both governments face strict pressure to stay on schedule and on budget; any slippage risks disrupting the grant.

Residents in the affected subdivisions should expect construction staging, temporary access disruptions, and ground disturbance as the project moves from final design and permitting into active mobilization. The interlocal agreement between Harris County and Houston was structured specifically to unify permitting and project delivery, an approach intended to cut the bureaucratic delays that have historically stretched flood-control timelines in the region. Precinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey has been a consistent advocate for the Kingwood work.

Homeowners who want to confirm whether their parcel falls inside the improved Taylor Gully drainage basin can check the project boundaries on the HCFCD website at hcfcd.org, where the district maintains updated maps and project documentation.

The 2019 floods launched years of community pressure, engineering studies, funding applications, and government negotiation. With a contractor selected, federal money secured, and Harris County and Houston formally aligned, the subdivisions that watched Taylor Gully rise over their thresholds twice in a single year are finally watching concrete plans become concrete.