Bulldozers and Back Hoes Built Up the Floodplains; To Avoid Flooding We Have to Work With Nature, Not Against It

present, meandered about, changing course many times, and leaving behind occasional deep bends and sections of channels. The climate changed again and the streams became smaller, cutting new lower and smaller floodplains within the older floodplain. On the new level they meandered about, again changing course many times and leaving behind bends and channels called sloughs and oxbows.

When water spreads out in that two-mile or even wider area up north of here, then it holds the flood waters. There are natural detention ponds right there, over time, over geological time, 2 million years, this has happened. And trees there are going to help hold onto the water.

Those marshes protect Jefferson County from the storm surge. One of the things that we lose every day: our wetlands and our floodplains. We have developed in the floodplain. We’re talking about Bevil Oaks. Pinewood—same thing. Bevil Oaks, Pine Island Bayou. It’s an active floodplain and that used to be a forested area. We built houses and so that floodplain can’t do the job that it used to do.

did not stay in the floodplain. They came into the Big Thicket and hunted. They went down to the coast and hunted and got their salt. They went back where they weren’t gonna flood.

Today every day is loss of wetlands and I’m going to go to the refineries and all, Port Arthur LNG. All these places when they build they’re going to build in a wetland and they have to mitigate that. The mitigation can be 1 acre for 1 acre lost or could be 10 acres of mitigation for each acre of wetland lost. But we still lose that wetland. What they do is they buy credits in Blue Elbow Swamp that’s already a wetland. So we’re losing our wetlands. So our marshes, our floodplains, our wetlands— that’s what we need to protect.

There are things called nature-based projects that we can do to help. All things to help cannot be nature based, but we need to look at nature-based projects and put it back to nature instead of bulldozers and back hoes. And that can be done. And let’s us go back to living with the land, instead of against the land. It gave us everything that we have.

ELLEN BUCHANAN

If we conserve our natural resources, we can help our people. So let’s look at the geology of the area.

The Neches River formed as a drainage pattern during the 500,000 to 2 million years of the Pleistocene geological time. There were at least four major glacial advances during the Pleistocene Epoch. The glaciers did not reach this far south, but the changing climates and fluctuating sea levels that they caused directly influenced and created the streams and landforms of Southeast Texas.

Heavy rainfall during this time cut wide deep valleys. As climate warmed, the great ice masses began to melt. Sea level rose and the streams filled the valleys with alluvium—silty deposits. These filled-up valleys became the floodplains of the present rivers. Have you ever looked at a satellite map of the Neches River and seen how wide it is with its alluvial floodplain? The Neches used to be wider than the Mississippi.

Ancient streams were much larger than at

I’m in Silsbee; not a mile from me there’s a little subdivision that went in probably in the 50s or 60s off of 418 and Lee Miller Road. And north of it is a creek and then the road goes up like this. They built this subdivision in a bowl. So it floods. Silsbee is going to spend a million dollars that they got from the General Land Office to come and dig the ditches deeper, but those people are still going to flood.

We have other areas like this. Where do the people go? They really need to go, because they’re going to continue to flood and we can’t do anything for them.

Can you stop the water? We cannot stop the water. So what do we do for these folks, that their houses are in the floodplain and they’re gonna flood again? What do we do?

Indigenous folks, they

Ellen Buchanan retired from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department/State Parks in 2013 after 32 years caring for Texas cultural and natural resources. Now an activist, she serves as President of the Big Thicket Natural Heritage Trust.