Harris County Commissioner's Court moved forward with a vote to adopt interim floodplain development rules yesterday, and one of the most sweeping changes is to the stormwater detention requirements for new development county-wide. The purpose of these changes is to continue to make the region more flood-resilient in the long-run, and stormwater detention and drainage play a huge role in this. Basically, detention is any feature on a tract of land that serves to slow down the rate of drainage downstream and/or into the storm sewer system. When the rate of drainage is too fast, that puts properties which may be downstream or "lower" at greater risk of flooding, and there is obviously a chain reaction to this. While most of the current regulations at the

Boulevard's resident flood expert Bill Baldwin is quoted in the Houston Chronicle article "After supporting flood bond, Houston-area developers want to delay new building rules" on the county-wide push to modify the floodplain development code as it relates to stormwater detention and other standards in anticipation of a "growing" floodplain. Read more at the link below!

Houston Association of Realtors board member Bill Baldwin said the county must focus on developing “smart policy” and advocated for a three-month delay implementing the new rules. He lamented that a group of stakeholders, a mix of city and county officials, developers and engineers, had met just twice since the flood control district proposed the rule changes in March. “I sure would