With Harvey, Imperfect Engineering Meets a Perfect Storm

Published: Sept. 1, 2017, 8:12 a.m.

Addicks and Barker Reservoirs are swaths of placid Texas prairie, wetland, and forest straddling I-10 where it hits Highway 6, about 20 miles west of downtown Houston. But that\u2019s not how nature sees them. To nature, those two open spaces are the top of a hydrological basin that drains through the city and into the Houston Ship Channel. Most of the time the reservoirs don\u2019t reserve any water.