LCA President – Kevin Lacy – Comments to the SJRA Board – March 25th, 2021

Good morning, I want to thank the Board for the opportunity to speak this morning and thank each Board member for their service to the SJRA and residents in the San Jacinto watershed. 

My name is Kevin Lacy – I have been a Lake Conroe homeowner for 15 years and currently serve as President of MUD District #2, Treasurer of Seven Coves HOA, and a year ago was elected as the President of the Lake Conroe Association which is why I am speaking this morning. 

I have personally invested many hundreds of hours reviewing hundreds of documents regarding the days leading up to Hurricane Harvey, the actions of the SJRA before and after this once in 800-year storm, the flooding consequences and causes of this horrendous loss of life and property in our watershed. To date I can find only one single error by the SJRA in their actions and decisions before and after Harvey. 

That error was made on February 20th, 2020. That error was to ignore your own technical studies, the advice of your own technical staff, and to completely ignore the only full technical study in existence, the Bleyl Report, that concluded there is no benefit from seasonal lowering to mitigate flooding. 

That decision error was made in an emotionally charged meeting that unfairly categorized Lake Conroe area residents as only caring about their boats and recreation. It brought hundreds of Lake Houston residents to the meeting that had suffered so much to speak out that night to defend a seasonal lowering program who were unaware that it is ineffective. Not one mentioned the real problem. That hundreds of businesses and homes were developed in the confluence of a huge watershed without the needed infrastructure – which is a responsibility of local government to properly drain flood waters. This organization knows fully well that Lake Conroe releases were not a significant cause of Hurricane Harvey flooding. Lowering the lake is not a primary or even minimally beneficial solution. 

This Board (minus the two new Board members) made an error by minimizing the technical evidence and used the premise that the water that was being released for seasonal lowering belonged to the CoH. Yes, it is correct that the CoH has water rights, but it is a violation of state water rights to use that water as has been done by the COH in 2018 and 2019.  The LCA has spent significant funds and efforts to trace every single gallon of water released due to seasonal lowering. We have proven via your own data and the CoH data and our analysis that every one of the 37 Billion gallons released from Lake Conroe was fully discharged across the Lake Houston dam and into the Gulf of Mexico. It has also been falsely reported to the TCEQ as being used entirely for municipal purposes. 

You have our full reports, and we would expect that before another gallon is released come April 1 that your technical staff and legal counsel advise you on the risk of proceeding. We feel that you have been fully alerted that the water from seasonal lowering in 2018 and 2019 has been entirely wasted and improperly reported by the CoH to the TCEQ.  You made a small error on February 20, 2020. However, now that you have been made party to conclusive proof of massive waste and that your customer – the CoH – has misrepresented their use of that water please do not compound the error. Temporarily halt seasonal lowering and ask the CoH to technically defend the purpose and impact of lowering as well as commit that not a single gallon of water released is wasted as we have proven. There is no imminent flooding threat due to maintaining full pool – do not waste water due to an arbitrary date like SJRA did last May.