Harris County has the highest concentration of flood-prone industrial facilities in the country, with just over 70 percent of the facilities in danger of heavy downpours, according to recent research published by Rice University’s Center for Coastal Future and Adaptive Resilience. 

The researchers analyzed the risk communities throughout the U.S. have to industrial sites flooding during rain and storm events, creating a searchable map for Houstonians to identify the facilities nearest to them. 

“We have special conditions here that create risks that other coastal cities don’t face. We have probably the densest petrochemical corridor in the Western Hemisphere just some 10 miles from the fourth-largest city in the country,” said Dominic Boyer, co-director for Rice’s Coastal Future Center, or CFAR. 

Houstonians can search for a specific address and identify which facilities are nearby — which are highlighted with a black dot on the map. Once clicked, the black dot will open and report information on the facility, including its industry type, amount of emissions, facility flood factor 1 through 10 and if the facility has an elevated future flood risk. 

Phylicia Lee Brown, a research scientist at Rice University who conducted the analysis, created a searchable database by mapping every large industrial facility from data provided by the Environmental Protection Agency. She then used predictive future flood risk data from First Street Foundation, a company specialized in analyzing climate models and land-use data to better understand flood risk across the United States. The flood risk data is scaled from 1 to 10, with anything over 3 considered an elevated future flood risk. 

“This is obviously happening all around the country,” Brown said. “But it is very apparent in Houston.” 

Communities at risk 

For decades, Harris County has been a hub for the energy and chemical industry. Hundreds of petrochemical plants, refinery facilities and other industries stretch for miles across Greater Houston, the Ship Channel and throughout the bay. At the same time, the county is in the crosshairs of climate change and extreme flooding events — a growing threat for these industries and the communities surrounding it all. 

For residents like Juan Flores, an environmental activist who grew up and still lives in Galena Park, the petrochemical industry looms over daily life, with the strong smell of sour egg fumes and flares that lit up at night.  

He knows, much like many of his neighbors, that his home near the Houston Ship Channel cen be a downpour away from an environmental disaster. Floodwaters, caused by storms or lesser rain events, can be a threat to facilities and the nearby communities. Flores still remembers floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 causing more than 460,000 gallons of gasoline to spill from a facility storage tank into the Ship Channel. 

“There are so many unknowns out there, so many possibilities,” Flores said. “We’re always worried about it, it’s always in the back of our minds.”

In Galena Park, nearly every industrial facility within a mile radius is over 5 on the Rice University map. 

Areas near the Ship Channel and petrochemical industry, such as Pasadena, Deer Park and La Porte, all have numerous facilities nearby with high future flood risk — some with a risk over 7. 

“We have a large concentration of industrial facilities, but also a large concentration of flood-prone areas here in Houston,” Brown said. “All this unregulated development, like the no zoning in Houston, is a big problem. You can just build wherever you want. Then, there’s a lot of concrete in Houston, not enough drainage, which also causes massive issues.” 

Future research

In Houston, clusters of large industrial facilities are located in areas with higher percentages of people of color and poverty. Because of this, Brown is now working on a second study focused on the social and health impacts of living near facilities with high flood risk. 

“When we think of floods and different weather events that our region goes through, it’s very stressful for local communities when you live near a refinery or a concrete batch plant and you’re just wondering what kind of chemicals are being carried through my home in floodwater,” said Jackie Metcalfe, the executive director of the nonprofit Texas Health and Environmental Alliance. “It’s not just the worst-case scenario, but minor rain events too can carry contaminants off site.” 

Metcalfe used to live near the Ship Channel before moving to north Houston over concerns about pollution in the area. For years, she has worked as an environmental advocate throughout Houston. Galena Park’s Flores, who works as the community air monitoring program manager for the nonprofit Air Alliance Houston, is also focusing on industry and community near the Ship Channel. 

Their concerns aren’t just focused on large, active polluters, but old relic sites around the Houston area that once held industry and are now Superfund sites or brownfields — meaning spots with leftover contamination from polluting facilities. Research conducted in 2021 by Jim Elliott, a sociology professor at Rice University and co-director at CFAR, and others found that there are nearly 2,000 relic sites in Harris County with risk to flooding. 

“Communities are built on top of them and we simply do not know what contaminants, if any, are still present,” Metcalfe said. “There hasn’t been any investigation or any testing, and that’s a major concern along with these major active facilities.” 

The hope for this new research and any research going forward is to make it available for the communities who need it for advocacy and change. Already, CFAR is connected and partnered to community groups around Houston — including with Metcalfe — to spread out the work.

In 2022, FEMA launched Community Disaster Resilience Zones, which requires the agency to use a natural hazard risk assessment to better understand which census tracts are most at risk from natural hazards and climate change. 

This, Elliott said, is a good start. In Houston, there’s the third component: industry. 

“It’s the storms and it’s the people and it’s the toxicity that’s really going to change the future,” Elliott said. “We need to get out in front and develop resources with institutions and communities to tackle this grand challenge we’re up against.” 

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