First Colony Levee Improvement District 2

At 12:00 noon today, Tropical Storm Beryl is just off the coast of Texas and looks like it might strengthen to a Category 1 Hurricane just before landfall, somewhere around Matagorda.  The storm track is predicted to continue northeastward, and the center of the storm will pass just to the north and west of Fort Bend County.   The path of the storm will place us on the “dirty side” and it is likely that we will feel tropical storm type winds and rainfall amounts.  The latest prediction from the National Weather Service shows our portion of Fort Bend County at 55 to 65 mph winds with gusts to 80 mph, and 5 to 7 inches of rainfall.

The FCLID2 Operator and the Engineer have our Subdivision prepared and ready for this storm.  We ran all three of our pumps during last month’s flood event and our two standby generators were operated.  The diesel generator fuel tank is full and of course the natural gas generator is always ready to go.  Everything was inspected recently by the US Army Corps of Engineers (which we passed with excellence), and we also participated in a simulated flood training event at the FBC Office of Emergency Management last week.

As an extra precaution, our Operator will have technicians stationed at nearby FBCLID2 overnight and will be able to react to any issue in our community within 5 minutes.  They will be up all night monitoring the status of the storm.

The bottom line is, we can easily handle the predicted rainfall from Tropical Storm Beryl and keep FCLID2 safe from flooding.  FCLID2 is on the job.  The FCLID2 website is www.FCLID2.com if you would like further information.

Ron Frerich
Board Member
FCLID2

The Commonwealth Residents,

The First Colony Levee Improvement District No. 2 (FCLID2) Board of Directors and our District Operator and Engineer have been monitoring the National Weather Service reports and the USGS river forecast for the Brazos River high-water event for the past week.

The Brazos River is currently forecasted to crest at 45.3 feet in Richmond, Texas just above Minor Flood stage, on Friday evening into Saturday morning and then slowly start to recede.  At that level, we still have about 5 more feet of river rise before reaching Major Flood Stage for Fort Bend County.  Even at Major Flood Stage, our levee system is still well above the level needed to protect our Commonwealth Community.

The current river level outside of our levee is about 4 feet higher than the inside level of Alcorn Lake at the District’s Pump Station.  Gravity outflow of the rainwater from the interior of Commonwealth has ceased because of the river height against our flood gates.  We are currently performing maintenance pumping this morning which will lower the Lake Alcorn level to help maximize the storage capacity in our internal lake system with the forecast for rain Sunday through Tuesday.

The District has an Emergency Action Plan (EAP) with multiple levels of operation and manpower requirements. Currently FCLID2 is at the second lowest readiness level of the EAP and our operators have tested the district’s pumps and generators.  Should river levels rise more than currently predicted or more rainfall be predicted, we are prepared to step up operations as dictated in our Emergency Action Plan.

The bottom line is FCLID2 is closely monitoring the Brazos River levels and weather forecasts and we are prepared to implement stepped up operations as dictated in the Emergency Action Plan if required.