World / USA / Texas / Highlands, 8 km from center Coordinates: 29°45'10"N   95°2'58"W

Baytown Nature Center (Brownwood Subdivision) (Baytown)


A suburban subdivision (in the shadow of the massive Baytown Refinery) which was vacated due to flooding problems. Roads and lots for 400 homes were carved out of the bushes on this 450 acre riverfront peninsula in the 1950's. Flooding from a storm surge in 1961 was the first incident which halted further development. Levees and pumps were installed to protect the existing homes, however another flood, caused by Hurricane Alicia, in 1983 caused an evacuation, afterwhich FEMA bought out the residents interests, and the community was condemned. Now turned into a natural preserve.
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place comments:
20 months ago MrsA   0
The name of the 1961 storm was Hurricane Carla. She was a did a doozy of number on the Houston-Galveston area.
 8 months ago MrT   0
The flooding problems that the Brownwood subdivision experiences were also caused by sinking of the neighborhood after water was pumped out by local industy, including the nearby Exxon plant to the east. There had been less than 1 foot of subsidence, or sinking of the ground, in the early 1940's, but this increased to 9 feet from 1940's to 1980's after industrial activity in the area was increased. Groundwater was removed from two large underground water reserves, called aquifers, namely the Chicot and Evangeline aquifers.
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Edited: 33 months ago Languages: en