TxDOT Accused of Illegal Dirt Dumping in Cedar Bayou Floodplain

Harris County has issued a cease-and-desist order against a property owner in the Cedar Bayou floodplain after TxDOT contractors were caught depositing excavated dirt there in what county officials and advocates say violated regulations adopted specifically to prevent flood risk from accumulating fill.

According to Precinct 3 Director of Engineering Eric Heppen, P.E., PMP, the cease-and-desist was issued to the owner of the property where TxDOT contractors had been depositing dirt excavated from the Luce Bayou watershed. Precinct 3 Project Manager Jason Hains said trucks had stopped depositing fill on the afternoon of February 24, though nearby residents reported seeing no trucks entering or leaving the property that same day.

The scale of the operation was significant. Approximately 20 dump trucks were loading at a detention basin under construction adjacent to FM2100, drawing from one of two active truck lines at the excavation site. From there, the trucks made repeated round trips to deposit the excavated material into the Cedar Bayou floodplain in what observers described as massive quantities.

Chris Summers, who reported the activity and complained directly to TxDOT, put the accountability question plainly: "TXDoT may not have known where their fill dirt was going, but should have."

TxDOT's North Harris Assistant Area Engineer Nyemb Nyemb, PE, replied to Summers with a statement acknowledging the complaint. "Our construction and environmental teams are looking into it now," Nyemb wrote. "We also have a meeting with Harris County tomorrow and will address this matter with them directly. TXDoT contractors are required to comply with all applicable floodplain and environmental regulations, and any confirmed violations will be corrected."

The fill operation is alleged to have violated Harris County Floodplain Regulations adopted by Commissioners Court in 2019, enacted in direct response to Hurricane Harvey. Those rules, which include provisions under Section 4.07(e), were designed to address the kind of cumulative unauthorized dumping that flood researchers and county engineers say contributed to the scale of Harvey's destruction. During that storm, almost half of the Harris County homes that flooded were located outside any mapped floodplain, a pattern that officials have linked to decades of incremental fill activity. The problem predates Harvey: unauthorized dumping in floodplains has been documented across nearly twenty years since Tropical Storm Allison struck in 2001.

Residents are now pressing for harsher penalties, arguing that regulatory responses have not kept pace with the flood risk such fill operations create across the county's bayou watersheds.

The identity of the property owner who received the cease-and-desist has not been disclosed, nor have the TxDOT contractors involved been publicly named. The county has not yet released the full text of the enforcement order, and TxDOT has not confirmed the outcome of its promised meeting with Harris County officials or the findings of its internal construction and environmental review.