FEMA to pay $25M to help build flood gates and waterproof Kingwood High School – Houston Chronicle

Two years after Hurricane Harvey left more than five feet of water sloshing through Kingwood High School, FEMA has approved $25 million in funding to construct flood gates and waterproof the buildings brick exterior to fend off future storms.

The flood gates will protect the schools doors and windows, offering what Humble ISD Superintendent Elizabeth Fagen hopes will be peace of mind for Kingwood High students who were displaced from the campus for months after Harvey.

Now, every time that the students experience a water event, they are wondering and worrying Will this mean well be displaced, well have to share facilities, all these things, Fagen said Wednesday. We believe in letting them know that we put measures in place so their school will not be inoperable.

The $25 million from FEMA will cover about 90 percent of the cost to build the flood control system. The school district will pay the remaining $3 million. The flood mitigation systems will not be ready until 2022, Fagen said.

While the 2,700-student Kingwood High may be the first K-12 school in Greater Houston to use flood gates, it is not the first to make itself more flood and storm resistant.

After Hurricane Ike crashed onto Galvestons shore and flattened schools across that district in 2008, architecture firm PBK worked with Galveston ISD to rebuild and reinforce its campuses from future storms.

Dan Boggio, CEO of PBK, said the process to rebuild the schools into more resilient facilities took years. Construction workers built a series of levies, or berms, around many. Others were raised off the ground. One, the Crenshaw School of Environmental Studies, now sits atop stilts on the Bolivar Peninsula.

Flood gates have proven a popular flood control technique at other Houston-area institutions. The Texas Medical Center and the University of Houstons main campus installed gates in and around their buildings after Tropical Storm Allison caused hundreds of millions of dollars damage at both in 2001.

At the University of Houston, 90 of the campus then 105 buildings were damaged by Allison, costing more than $100 million to repair. Flood waters gushed into the universitys tunnel system, drowning critical utilities, and water levels reached 10 to 12 feet high in six buildings, including the Law Center, the Fine Arts Building and the Student Center Satellite.

David Oliver, now UHs associate vice president for facility and construction management, said the damage from Allison led the university to invest in flooding infrastructure, especially for its lower lying buildings.

That proved fortuitous during Hurricane Harvey, when only a handful of buildings suffered damage mainly from seepage of flood water during the record-breaking storm that dumped as much as 60 inches of rain on parts of the Houston area. One building got six inches of water inside, but that mostly was due to a pump failure.

The schools tunnels, now sealed with submarine doors during floods, stayed dry. Overall, the university sustained about $20 million in damage from Harvey, most of it from a broken steam system at one of its buildings in the Texas Medical Center, which officials were unable to address due to the high water surrounding the area.

Harvey was a very similar event to Allison not a lot of wind but tons and tons of rain, Oliver said. The difference in how the buildings performed was huge. The damage was minimal compared to Allison.

The UH flood gates are almost unnoticeable, buried so they are flush with sidewalks and roads. When water begins to soak the ground around the gates, it flows into a gap that surround the metal barriers. The water causes the flood gates to float upward gradually, eventually topping out if the water gets that high.

Kingwood has been a repeat victim of flooding in recent years. After Harvey, Fagen and her administrative team at Humble ISD began thinking of ways to prevent flood damage to the high school from future storms.

They thought about demolishing the whole building and rebuilding it on raised land retrofitted with an underground water retention system, a proposal that could have cost more than $260 million. They also considered building walls or levies around the school to keep it dry

The district ended up working with FEMA to devise the series of flood gates and waterproofing plan for the building exterior.

Preliminary designs for the Kingwood High project include the same type of flood gates used at UH, although district CFO Mike Seale said that could change. The goal is to make the gates largely invisible during dry times, but rise as high as eight feet when needed.

When it comes to waterproofing the buildings exterior, Boggio at PBK said there are two options: remove the outside brick so waterproofing can be added between the exterior walls and interior insulation; or build another wall inches away from the existing brick exterior and inserting waterproofing material in the newly created gap.

Were basically going to design the building like an inverted bathtub, Boggio said. We want to keep the water out.

It cost $63 million to restore Kingwood High after Harvey. In the six months it took to fix the building, Humble ISD sent Kingwood students to Summer Creek High School, cutting class days in half to accommodate both schools: Summer Creek students took their classes in the mornings, and Kingwood students arrived on campus in the afternoon.

Successful implementation of the flood control measures could help eliminate anxiety for parents, students and staff at the high school.

Tracey Wright, a Kingwood alumna whose 16-year-old son now attends the school, said they were uneasy before his freshman year because of the amount of damage at the school from Harvey, but now is hopeful the gates and waterproofing will keep the building dry.

If it saves them from repeatedly having to replace flooring, replace things, displace the kids, they should do it, Wright said.

shelby.webb@chron.com

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FEMA to pay $25M to help build flood gates and waterproof Kingwood High School - Houston Chronicle