HOUSTON -- Houston finally got the soaking it so desperately needed this weekend, but it came with a flood of trash that’s being flushed out from the bayous to Galveston Bay.
Think of Buffalo Bayou as an artery connected to the heart of downtown Houston -- a clogged artery.
“There are 17 billion drink bottles sold in Texas every year. As much as 20 percent end up on our roadways,” said Mike Garver, a board member for the Buffalo Bayou Partnership. “The rain picks them up, puts them in the storm sewer. The storm sewers take them to our streams. It’s a really big problem.”
It’s a really big problem that affected just about every bayou in the city, after the most rain we’ve seen in more than a year. Think of it as a good flushing out.
“It goes straight into the waterways, down Buffalo Bayou, and down all of our local waterways,” says Bob Stokes of the Galveston Bay Foundation. “Once it gets down to Galveston Bay it affects wildlife. It affects boaters. They hit it. It’s just the kind of thing we don’t want to see in Galveston Bay.”
There’s not much we can do when it comes to nature or the drought, but trash is an altogether different story. The city says we could save millions of dollars in clean up expenses each year, if people wouldn’t litter down storm drains.
