HOUSTON - Final repairs continued Friday afternoon while neighbors just started to move back home to Timber Grove after Hurricane Harvey.
“Our across-the-street neighbors have been back for five days,” said Timber Grove resident Courtnie Hays. “And everyone else on the street within like the last two weeks.”
Neighbors claim 90 percent of the homes in Section Five of Timber Grove flooded during Harvey, which is why they are so concerned about what has been developing in their backyard.
“It's going to come directly into our neighborhood and things that didn’t affect us, rainwater-wise, is absolutely going to affect us,” Hays said.
A new residential development for 77 new homes called Stanley Park has been under construction for several months.
The project was “red tagged” by the City of Houston on Monday following a city council meeting last month.
This means all construction must stop, and the developer has 10 days to comply with the alleged deficiencies leading to the stop work order.
"The City of Houston Floodplain Management Office issued a red tag to the Stanley Park Development after the contractor/developer was found to have installed a culvert without a permit and there were two sections of the stream that were blocked by fill,” a city spokesperson wrote in an email to KHOU 11. "Also, the current mitigation pond does not match was what approved in the original plans.”
The developer has been given 10 days to comply with the City of Houston code, and the contractor must get necessary permits and resolve inconsistencies in the submitted plans before work is allowed to resume, according to the city.
The developer may also choose to prove its current mitigation is adequate.
Video Timber Grove residents say they took during Wednesday’s flood of the Stanley Park development shows rushing waters flowing through the project site.
Luckily, neighbors say their homes were not flooded, but it was close.
“Our streets were filled with rushing water with the fill dirt from the construction sites, and it’s not right,” Hays said. "It’s not normal and it’s never looked like that before.”
KHOU 11 spoke with SWPP Development but they had no comment on the current circumstances concerning the Stanley Park project.
Timber Grove residents claim the neighborhood flowed with red clay water from the construction site during Wednesday’s flash flood which poured into their streets and tinted the color of their swimming pools. They say much of it came from the project site.
“In a perfect world, we’d hope the builders would realize there’s no way of doing this without affecting the entire neighborhood,” said Timber Grove resident Clint DeAtley.
Neighbors say if their homes flood as a result of this development, they make take legal action.