Kevin Shanley and his dog sitting beside Buffalo Bayou

Kevin Shanley and the Bayou Preservation Association (BPA) are converting Houston’s polluted, flood-prone waterways into valuable, safe amenities. They face a daunting challenge that requires changes in thinking, tremendous amounts of cooperation and a little regulation.

Mr. Shanley explains, "The metropolitan region of Houston has 800 to 1,000 miles of what once were natural streams and another several thousand miles of man-made streams. They’re everywhere in the county, like veins in a leaf. Years ago, we thought we could make these natural rivers into hydraulic highways to drain our neighborhoods and factory areas. We’ve learned that we can’t turn rivers into big, open storm sewers. It just doesn’t work."

When asked what will work, Mr. Shanley points out, "We need to recognize that a natural river has a limit to its carrying capacity and that it’s natural for it to flood during tropical storms. By building detention basins, like the Willow Waterhole Greenway Project in Westbury, we can limit and control the flow of water. We also can use the basins as park space and wildlife habitat. Finally, we need to give rivers more room by preventing new development in the wrong places."

The Bayou Preservation Association has been protecting and promoting the area’s natural waterways for more than 30 years. Its first victory prevented Buffalo Bayou from becoming a concrete ditch. According to Mr. Shanley, "BPA was a small ‘firefighting’ group. When a project would come up that could potentially destroy something, BPA would round up its troops and fight it. We’re sitting next to Buffalo Bayou, where BPA succeeded."

These days BPA exchanges information with government agencies, conducts seminars and educates the public about the benefits of nurturing the area’s natural streams. The organization offers information about the region’s waterways through its Web site (www.bayoupreservation.org) and wants everyone from school children to developers to utilize the resource. Through this new technology, BPA intends to change the way people think about water and development.

"If people think a river is just a piece of drainage infrastructure, that’s what we get. But we want people to understand and to know that a river is a living part of our environment in an urban area where building is inevitable," Mr. Shanley states.

"But," he asks, "do we build well or do we build poorly? We could become the Calcutta or the Paris of the southern states depending on how we treat our surroundings."

How surroundings are treated, Mr. Shanley realizes, usually involves compromise and consensus. He is quick to explain, "We all live with regulations. When we build streets, we have appropriate setbacks. We have safety ordinances and codes. As the city grows, we need a more sophisticated set of rules for living together. One of those rules should be that we need to have more room for rivers. There are better ways than cutting down all the trees and turning a natural stream into a storm sewer. For me, the most interesting challenge is to figure out how a city of millions can live in real harmony with its natural systems."

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