Houston Property Owners Win Takings Case Over Hurricane Harvey Downstream Flooding

This week, nearly nine years after Hurricane Harvey ravaged the Gulf Coast, dropping as much as 50 inches of rain across the greater Houston area and causing $125 billion in damage, a group of homeowners prevailed in their claims that the government owes them for the flooding of their properties. 

Thousands of lawsuits were filed in the wake of the historic 2017 storm, and the courts divided them into two categories: property owners who lived upstream of the Addicks and Barker reservoirs, and property owners who lived downstream of the flood control projects operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The dams sit about 17 miles west of the city and were constructed in the 1940s, when fewer than 500,000 people called Houston home, to protect downstream properties from major flooding events.