By Carol Bell-Walton
Special Contributor
Anyone who lives in Dallas knows it too well: pot-holes deep as crypts, funky traffic lights, and dangerous waters whenever it pours. Dallas’ infrastructure is sorely neglected.
And now? The city is pushing for more density, with tax-dollar bills making stars in their eyes. This is dangerous.
The proposed ForwardDallas comprehensive land use plan ignores Dallas’ aging infrastructure, which will create risks to residents both in terms of safety and expense.
While planners are fully aware of dangerous inadequacies in our stormwater drainage infrastructure, they are nonetheless recommending increasing the building density without regard to the extreme costs of increased flooding or flood control. If approved, ForwardDallas will overwhelm the city’s stormwater infrastructure in East Dallas.Â
Efficient And Effective Stormwater Management
Efficient and effective stormwater management saves lives and property, but Dallas’ aging infrastructure is increasingly unable to deal with our heavy rains. Areas of East Dallas are experiencing flood events too often. Flash flooding not only endangers drivers, but also impedes access to critical services – such as access to Baylor Hospital’s Emergency Room.
During a flash flood last year, a fire truck hydroplaned off Garland Road toward the White Rock Lake Spillway, taking another car with it. That fire truck did not get to the emergency where it was needed. Floods cause substantial damage and cause property owners and insurance companies great expense.Â
Every up-sized property built raises the amount of stormwater runoff incrementally.
Imagine the consequences of runoff when single-family houses are torn down to build multifamily housing.
Dallas is currently spending $300 million on the Mill Creek Project to improve drainage in the Baylor Medical Complex area. There was also $52 million — a fraction of the amount needed — approved in the recent bond fund election to go toward flood prevention and stormwater management projects. The City is already above $350 million in spending and we are not even close to dealing with runoff citywide. In addition, our creeks have not been maintained. These problems can be rectified but will require enormous investments.Â
Inadequate Infrastructure
Chief Planner Patrick Blaydes said the existing East Dallas stormwater drainage infrastructure is inadequate. Despite the deficiencies, Mr. Blaydes and the other City of Dallas planners are recommending drastically increasing density in East Dallas — actually all neighborhoods in Dallas, but it initiated as a District 9 discussion.
Fact: Stormwater drainage inefficiencies increase with the reduction of permeable land, the land that absorbs rain.Â
The City of West University in Houston transitioned from a neighborhood that did not flood to a neighborhood that routinely flooded as the home sizes grew in less than a decade. I know from personal experience. My car was carried away by high water both in an Austin flood and while living in West University during the transition to routinely flash flooding.Â
Dallas had a long, sad history of flood deaths. The city had moved forward under former Mayor Mike Rawlings’ leadership. He was committed to eliminating drowning deaths in Dallas saying, “We are better than this.” And he was right.
The current ForwardDallas plan ignores the reality of our city’s infrastructure deficits. And that is terribly reckless. Exacerbating the burden on our obsolete infrastructure by overbuilding lots, which will increase runoff, is even more than reckless. It’s dangerous. The economic liabilities of being forced into upgrading infrastructure are enormous, as with the Mill Creek Project. We are spending $300 million so our emergency rooms don’t flood. That is the reality of aging infrastructure coupled with expanding increasingly impermeable surfaces.Â
How many duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and 10-plexes need to be built to offset the costs of upgrading the utilities that will undoubtedly be overburdened?
Costs of Increasing Density
The expenses of reworking the stormwater drainage systems alone cannot be covered in costs by this plan to increase tax density. It is a Catch-22 of needing increased tax density which will cause the need for more increased tax density.Â
Some have asked, “Isn’t stormwater runoff Dallas Water Utilities’ responsibility?” Not necessarily or we wouldn’t have seen the bond projects. Whether the expense is on the water bill or the tax bill, it contributes to the lack of affordability in housing. The same is true of upgrading energy transmission systems, the upgrades show up on utility bills.
While the environmental justice aspect of ForwardDallas is long overdue, the plan for increased density will overwhelm our aging systems. Yet somehow the increased tax density is supposed to cover the bill. The plan is built on wishful thinking while ignoring known realities and environmental science.
Ignoring the real deficits that exist greatly increases project risks. Forward Dallas has to factor in the realities as they are not starting with a clean slate. The promise of increased taxes per square foot is shortsighted. Tax revenue generated by razing single-family homes in East Dallas and other parts of the city will be needed to cover subsequent drainage projects caused by the increased density — it will be, pardon my pun, a wash.
Urban planning without factoring in known infrastructure problems is not planning at all, it is folly. In this case, the folly is economically irresponsible and increased flooding is dangerous to people and property.Â
Carol Bell-Walton grew up in Dallas and earned bachelor’s degrees in international business and petroleum land management. She managed Onyx Energy’s vast inventory of real estate and has since invested in real estate locally. Bell-Walton and her husband are retired.