Underground Hazardous Material Sites in the Floodplains of White Oak Bayou

To reduce the environmental damage done by flooding within the county, the Harris County Flood Control District Environmental Services Department has developed a watershed environmental baseline dataset to be used with numerous other GIS datasets. Roughly 20 percent of the 32,000 sites identified in Harris County are underground storage tanks containing a variety of potentially harmful substances. More than 2,000 have been categorized as leaking tanks. Flooding in the areas around these tanks has the potential to cause significant damage to the downstream environment and poses a health risk to residents.

This map displays underground storage tanks (USTs) and leaking underground storage tanks (LUSTs) in the floodplains of one of the more densely populated watersheds in Harris County: White Oak Bayou Watershed. Knowing where these sites are in relation to the floodplain gives the HCFCD Environmental Department the ability to quickly and effectively identify existing or potential conditions that might influence the design or the construction of a flood management project.

Courtesy of Harris County Flood Control District, Texas.