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Running head: RESERVOIRS AND REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT

Reservoirs and Real Estate Development
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Part One:
Construction of Reservoirs and Real Estate Development in West Houston
When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built two reservoirs known as Barker and Addicks
in 1940s, on what was then mostly empty plains, their goal was to prevent catastrophic flooding
of the Houston city center, 20 miles downstream (Burch, 2018). The empty prairies are dry most
of the time, scattered with sports fields and wooded parks. On the eastern boundaries, there are
earthen dams that allow floodwater to accumulate behind the flood pools during rainstorms. The
area covered by flood pools depends on how big the storm is and where it hits. This system had
been working efficiently when these reservoirs were surrounded by rice fields and prairie.
However real estate development projects in the 1990s occurred on flood pools and as today, there
are approximately 14, 000 homes built on the flood pools (Wallace, Watkins, Park, Singhvi &
Williams, 2018). When Hurricane Harvey storm occurred, more floodwater accumulated in the
dams and more than 9,000 homes and businesses were inundated by the reservoirs, causing deaths
and massive destruction of property.
Consequences
The political decision not to regulate homeowner knowledge of the purchase of the homes
has adverse consequences to both the economy and west Houston dwellers. When developers were
building Canyon Gate, a gated neighborhood, they did little to inform the homebuyers that housing
units were built inside a reservoir flood pool. Furthermore, the U.S Army Corps predicted the
flooding but they could not control real estate development on private land. The adverse
consequence of such a decision is that Texans did not take flood insurance, leading to massive
economic losses of their properties when the flooding occurred. This resulted in massive exodus
and those who decided to stay had to incur costs of over $100, 000 to renovate their houses

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(Romero, 2018). In most cases, the FEMA grant only covered a small fraction of the costs of the
repair. The economic consequences are the destruction of private businesses, leading to
unemployment for those who were self-employed. The government also faced the consequences
as many homeowners filed lawsuits for compensation. This is because the Army Corps was aware
of the disaster and but they did nothing to prevent it. The flooding also resulted in a toll death of
82 and mass causalities. If Texans in a neighborhood like Canyon Gate at Cinco Ranch had been
informed about the buying homes built inside flood pools, they could have reconsidered their
buying decisions (Romero, 2018).
New Regulations Approved the Houston City Council
The Houston...