Despite system improvements, Rio Grande Valley still faces troubles with flooding

There will never be another Hurricane Beulah.

The Category 5 storm that ripped through Deep South Texas and Mexico 40 years ago this week caused such destruction that its name was retired from the National Hurricane Center’s list of named storms.

The removal has done little to help Joe Tucker forget the most devastating effects of the storm.

“I don’t remember much about the hurricane,” said Tucker, who like most has lost track of Beulah’s rainfall records and wind gust reports with the passing of four decades. “But the flooding was a nightmare.”

Tucker, a Harlingen resident, worked for the International Boundary and Water Commission when Beulah made landfall near the mouth of the Rio Grande early on Sept. 20, 1967.

The IBWC provides “binational solutions” to issues regarding U.S.-Mexico treaties, boundary demarcation, national ownership of waters, sanitation, water quality and flood control in the border region, according to its Web site, ibwc.state.gov.

This includes monitoring function of the Rio Grande levee system, elevated earthen berms that protect adjacent property from floodwaters.

Though the existing levees were in place in 1967, massive flooding swallowed communities and neighborhoods across the Rio Grande Valley. Harlingen and McAllen were the worst affected, Tucker recalled.

While Pharr had 21 inches of rain, the National Weather Service recorded up to 30 inches of rain in some areas.

On Sept. 28, President Lyndon Johnson declared disasters in 24 South Texas counties, including those in the Rio Grande Valley. More than 50 lives were lost and $1 billion in damage estimated.

The levee system was inadequate then and they remain inadequate today, Tucker says.

“If we were to have a repeat of Hurricane Beulah Â… we could have another bad flood,” he said. “The levee system would never contain it.”

The last major upgrade to the levees in the lower Rio Grande was made in the 1970s, “following Hurricane Beulah,” according to the IBWC.

A report completed in August 2006 estimates rehabilitating the Lower Rio Grande Flood Control Project would cost about $125.5 million. A remapping of the floodplains along the levee system in Hidalgo and Cameron counties were expected to be completed by the end of this fiscal year but work to improve the system has not begun.

The movement of soil, overgrown brush along the levee banks and wear and tear on the levee roads have contributed to erosion, making some passages out of compliance with federal regulation.

“All of that has reduced the capacity of the river floodway Â… now it will not handle what it would have proved to handle after the Beulah flood,” Tucker warned.

Cameron County Judge Carlos H. Cascos estimates necessary upgrades to the levee system — from Penitas in Hidalgo County to southern Cameron County — between $150 million and $200 million.

“That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of money the federal government, and we, will have to spend if we have storm like Beulah hit us again,” Cascos said.

Cascos invoked the lessons of Hurricane Katrina (2005), during which the levees meant to protect New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast failed and caused catastrophic flooding, widespread loss of life and property.

“It was a breach in the levee system that caused that problem,” Cascos said. “We are no different here other than we have the potential for a much longer breach.”

In 2005, the University of Texas prepared a computer simulation of a Katrina-like hurricane’s effect on the Valley’s coastal area, specifically Brownsville, the region’s largest city with more than 170,000 residents.

For a Sept. 19, 2005 article, simulation creator Gordon Wells, of UT’s Center for Space Research, said, “Brownsville is like New Orleans,” in that it’s also built on a delta.

Patterned after Hurricane Carla, a 1961 Category 4 storm that came ashore near Port Lavaca, the simulated effects of “Hurricane Carly” were sobering. The model predicted a 17.3-foot storm surge — higher, in some places — would push water from the gulf and the Brownsville Ship Channel to inundate much of East Brownsville, including the Brownsville-South Padre Island International Airport area, parts of Southmost and land between Playa Bagdad and Matamoros.

A large swath of Brownsville between Highway 48 and FM 802 lies within the 100-year flood plain, which means it has a 1 percent chance of flooding in any given year. The area around Highway 77 and Price Road also is flood-prone, as are Cameron Park and parts of West Brownsville near Highway 281.

South Padre Island would see a storm surge as high as 9½ feet, enough to block access to the Queen Isabella Memorial Bridge, submerge Laguna and Gulf boulevards and flood the interior in a number of places to connect the Laguna Madre to the Gulf of Mexico. Much of the surrounding Laguna Madre-area land also would be under water.

And this, researchers at the time said, was a conservative estimate.

Moderate to strong storms already wreak havoc in small Valley communities and neighborhoods in the area’s major cities.

“It doesn’t take rocket science to figure this out — that if we get two or three days worth of rain, 18 inches or less, that we are going to have some serious problems,” Cascos said.

Rapid growth and slow-to-improve infrastructure has made flooding a major problem in the Valley.

Where fields and farmland once spanned acres, subdivisions and businesses now stand over layers of concrete, most without retention ponds, which would help alleviate flooding problems.

“We weren’t thinking about the levee system back then or subdivision growth,” said Cascos, a Harlingen native. “I remember hunting back there in those fields (on Highway 281) and now you’ve got 300 homes within a half-mile radius that weren’t there 10 years ago.”

George Garrett Jr., the Donna and Weslaco emergency management coordinator, and Jeff Johnston, the emergency management coordinator and homeland security director in Brownsville, said their respective counties have made extensive improvements to their communications systems since that 1967 hurricane, allowing the cities to stay in contact with each other during times of crisis.

But they say government shouldn’t bear all the responsibility for making preparations. They urge residents to develop family emergency plans as well, including gathering important documents, collecting enough medication for those with medical issues and determining what to do with pets.

“Preparation is the most important part of everything we do,” Garrett said.

Monitor reporter Jennifer Berghom contributed to this report