Newly Elevated Areas Send Water Into Old Neighborhoods, FEMA Money Goes Elsewhere

CHRIS JONES

Back in the day, Hurricane Andrew (1992) just blew wind, that was it: chased leaves. I went to the military, come back and my flight home was canceled due to a storm that was, I will say, forgotten about here in Southeast Texas: Hurricane Lili. She rained, I want to say 12 or 13 days, not just here in Beaumont, actually upriver. They opened what we know as the floodgate, or the salt barrier, further up the Neches River. Well, that Neches River then began to run along Pine Street. That was in 2002.

Now we have an issue where those communities are flooded on a consistent basis, and not only are they flooded, but some areas, especially African American areas or historical African American areas, especially after Drainage District 6 and some other finagling, end up flooding. These neighborhoods weren’t flooding before. There are now canals and all kinds of other things that run through the city—allegedly retention areas and ditches that run through the city to capture the water and keep it from encroaching into residential areas.

Those ditches are now known to inequitably move water from one side of the city to the next. They are pumping water on residents from west to east. This also creates the disparities where some members of our community are experiencing flooding.

These are ‘new’ floodplains, based on whoever makes those decisions. Members of these communities do not really have the necessities to just pack up and leave or say, “Well, I live in a flood zone. So we’re gonna, you know, just take our belongings and go somewhere else,” especially if that’s their homestead, especially if that’s a place where they not only raise their children, but were raised themselves.

So you see a community from the 60s, 70s, even 50s never flood, and they’re now all of a sudden flooding to mass extents. Areas are now being built on and again, and in order to make it attractive they’ll show “No flooding, no, none of that,” underestimating and underreporting the weather that happens in and around those particular areas. So it is incumbent that we learn the previous demographics of our area and topography of our area as well, so that we know where we live.

Inequalities also comes when after the flood FEMA and other agencies, federal or state, send out funding. I’m in the oldest Black neighborhood and most of that funding we do not see. In my neighborhood and in the North End of Beaumont there are some homes, some residents, that have a blue tarp from Ike. From 2007.

Mind you, FEMA has sent money. Nonprofit organizations have received money. But members of these communities do not receive that funding. So that’s our inequality. Some Other Place is not the only nonprofit organization that receives federal and state funding. And she does her best with the little amount that she gets. We have other nonprofit organizations, I call them “money funnels,” just so other corporate organizations can get a tax write-off. Those resources do not come to our communities, with the exception of maybe buyouts, so they can continue to exacerbate things for the minority Black and brown communities.

This city, the county also, and you can pinpoint whoever and however, allowed so much money to be returned back to our federal government to displace not only members in apartment complexes that are renting, that may even be in the process of being late on their mortgage. They allowed these monies to be sent back and didn’t really even expose the application process to this populace.

We all know that when we look in the canal, we’ll see water just smoothly, smoothly move through, especially the majority of the canals that we see in the area. Well, during Harvey, because Harvey rained for days as well, those waters rose. And we saw choppy waters in these once-calm canals. And observation is key. We live flat. There’s no way, shape, form or fashion that water is going to move from the west to the east and it’s choppy—unless it’s being pumped. That water was pumped from the west side of the city onto residents, onto business owners, small business owners that were already struggling before Harvey.

Mind you, we still had homes that had a blue roof in 2007 from Ike. So we saw that choppy water then being introduced into neighborhoods. Flooded historical Black churches in the North End, flooded historical burial grounds in the North End and these inequalities are just brushed off as, “Oh, well, we had to make do with what flooding we had in the West End,” and not telling people and/or the community the real reason of why now all of a sudden they’re flooding.

Chris “Unc” Jones is a U.S. Army veteran and lifelong Beaumonter with his own construction/consulting business. He continues on a mission to serve his community, especially the youth, including through the Charlton-Pollard Greater Historic Community Association.