Harris County broke ground Wednesday, Aug. 19, on an $18.6 million stormwater detention basin along Cypress Creek, the flood-prone corridor that swamped thousands of Spring-area homes during Hurricane Harvey and the 2016 Tax Day Flood.
Compartment 1B of the T.C. Jester Stormwater Detention Basin will add 793 acre-feet of storage capacity to the watershed, according to Community Impact. That's enough to hold roughly 258 million gallons of stormwater during heavy rain events.
"The groundbreaking represents another step toward protecting our homes, our businesses, our communities," Precinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey said at the ceremony.
Ramsey, Harris County Flood Control District Director Marcus Stuckett, State Rep. Sam Harless and Texas General Land Office official Regina Recinos attended the groundbreaking on the site along T.C. Jester Boulevard between Cypresswood Drive and Cypress Creek.
Funding and timeline
Compartment 1B is funded by $12 million in state money from the Texas Water Development Board, secured by Harless, and additional federal Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery dollars administered through the Texas General Land Office. HCFCD project communications manager Amy Crouser said the CDBG-DR funds are intended to cover costs that may exceed the $18.6 million contract amount.
Construction is now underway.
Compartment 1B is slated for completion by March 2027. Adjacent compartments 1A and 2 are expected to begin construction in December 2026, with completion by the end of 2027.
A fourth compartment on the basin's west side has a notice-to-proceed date of March 2028, according to a July 2026 Texas General Land Office program report. Community Impact reported the start date as between July and September 2028. The HCFCD project page lists the west compartment at 44 acres, funded by $16.4 million in federal CDBG-MIT money and $1 million from the 2018 Harris County Flood Bond.
Full build-out
When all four compartments are complete, the T.C. Jester basin is estimated to hold 1,200 acre-feet of stormwater storage, Stuckett said. The east side alone, spanning about 128 acres across compartments 1A, 1B and 2, is expected to provide roughly 1,000 acre-feet.
Jim Robertson, chairman of the Cypress Creek Greenway Project, said the watershed deals with "very significant" flooding that residents experienced during the Tax Day Flood in April 2016 and Hurricane Harvey in August 2017.
Harris County voters approved a $2.5 billion flood bond in August 2018, one year after Harvey, to finance flood control projects countywide. Multiple T.C. Jester compartments draw on that bond.
The TGLO program report showed Compartment 1B construction was 8% complete as of July 2026, with a total CDBG-DR contract award of $23.8 million for the east basin work.
Residents can submit questions about the project at hcfcd.org/TCJesterComment.
