Cypress Trails Equestrian Center in Houston Texas are being rescued from flooding, again.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2223509527939185&id=203055485347
I was just wondering if they would be affected again.
Just found video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6JqCwpTnAQ
Oh my! She should be shut down. Especially if this keeps happening. Ugh.
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She is not well liked in the endurance circles.
I’ve heard lots of bad things about her locally, not just the flooding issues. Namely issues with the horses she sells.
I seriously hope she has hardly any boarders at this point. I can’t imagine boarding my horse at a facility that is so prone to flooding and run by someone who seems to care so little for the animals in her care.
The county or city (not sure if she’s in the city limits) should step in and revoke her ability to keep animals on the property. She has put so many lives at risk repeatedly, both human and animal. Horses have drowned in the past on this property. It’s only a matter of time until a person is seriously injured or killed trying to save horses from this property.
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What a nightmare. Those poor horses 
. Someone needs to shut her down. I wonder if someone contacted a local land planning agency and they could possibly contact the city or county she is in about a land use/zoning change to help oust her?
Apparently she is stuck with the property. She tried to get the county to buy her out and they could not do it. Until people choose not to board there, it looks like it will be an ongoing problem.
They did offer a buy out but according to her it wasn’t enough money.
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For anyone not familiar with the geography, if you type the address of Cypress trails ( 21415 Cypresswood Dr, Humble, TX 77338 ) into the Harris County floodmap tool at
https://www.harriscountyfemt.org/
you will see the property is in the floodway. That’s right, it’s not in the 100 year floodplain or the 500 year floodplain, it’s in the actual floodway. So it is guaranteed to flood and flood often. The name “cypress” in these parts is for the bald cypress, a tree that loves to grow in wetlands and has special “knee” like root structures to help it live half submerged in water ( which you can see in this photo from the Jesse Jones park on the same creek a few short miles down the road from the equestrian place https://www.facebook.com/JesseHJones…=3&theater ) So even the name warns you of the danger.
The Houston Press article mentioned above says she claims the place didn’t flood before they built a bridge over the road in the 80s. That doesn’t seem remotely credible given that a) her place practically abuts the Spring Creek and the width of the floodway on the map up and downstream of the bridge would still encompass that distance. b) there was never a lot of historic development or housing along the Creek because people build first on higher ground ("Spring Creek is basically natural and therefore characterized by limited conveyance capacity in the channel and a larger natural floodplain. However, the lack of development in much of the watershed has kept flood damage to a minimum. The isolated incidents along the main channel are normally from structures built in naturally flood-prone areas. " see https://www.hcfcd.org/projects-studies/spring-creek/ )
There are homeowners and horse owners who do their research and live in spots outside the floodplains but still get caught when we have events like Hurricane Harvey that dump 60 inches of rain. Everyone in our community understands that and has sympathy. But Cypress Trails is pure stupidity. :mad:”‹”‹”‹”‹”‹”‹”‹ It puts those horses at risk. It puts at risk every volunteer that has to go and try to bail out her horses and her mess. It diverts emergency resources away from other people who might need help. Immediately after storms, the county has so much too worry about that it isn’t going to look into the history of this place to begin to take steps to remove the animals from her care.
Horse people in the area know and talk to themselves about this sh*tshow. That doesn’t help. One thing that needs to happen is for the representatives from multiple horse organizations in town and the Houston SPCA to issue a statement to the press about the situation just as they would for a hoarder/cruelty case. Because right now, the general public just sees some sad video on the news and falls for her sob story again. People new to horses don’t know. Vacationers looking for a dude ranch type trail ride don’t know. I think horse people outside Harris county get taken in too (a cringeworthy EventingNation post: https://eventingnation.com/wylie-vs-…-texas-part-i/
)
If she competes in endurance, then maybe the AERC could be contacted to investigate on the grounds of cruelty and determine future eligibility to compete? Ban her from registering Arabians with AHA? If it’s possible legally, have somebody take her to small claims court and charge her expenses every time people have to risk their own safety to get her horses out? Maybe email companies like Taylored Tack that have the owner’s picture on their site (https://www.promoplace.com/21073/sto…MER_PHOTOS.htm ) and ask if they really want that kind of representation? Put negative reviews on Yelp and Google and TripAdvisor if you have had to rescue her horses.
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FWIW…with the Houston flooding…I’ve had several inquiries about our horse farm for sale in NE Texas by people flooded out in the Houston area. One response I got yesterday said they were “looking specifically for river/lake/waterfront locations!!!” WTH??? They seem addicted to getting their farms washed away!!
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Problem is there is a lot of Houston in the floodways. A lot. Residential areas. It’s possible that changes to the bridge did cause more flooding by creating a bottleneck, look at the long armored sides of the ramp almost all the way to the channel immediately adjacent to her property and on the FEMA map it’s a clear pinching down. Where I used to work one particular neighborhood frequently flooded badly until the road department finally lengthened and raised the bridges so they stopped functioning like a dam. They’ve spent over 40 million dollars over time adding this and that fix till the projection is for no more flooding, but all the cow pastures went under around my work, the doors in the back would go under and the semi parking would be three feet deep. Cows were low priority as was semi parking the drivers had to wade through.
My first reriding place was in the floodplain and so was next door. New houses either were not permitted or had to be on stilts. The livestock had provision to escape only because being on the edge of the floodplain the animals could walk themselves to higher ground. At the old rodeo grounds they had brought in fill dirt to create higher ground, but nowadays they want no net fill in floodplains though this is TX where they might be more respectful of property rights. I see a house in the floodways too at Cypress Trails too, my memory has it that FEMA was buying out and eminent domain-ing all the floodways homes they could, but inevitably they are low value just by virtue of the risky location.
It’s a bad place to have such a crowded facility, by now people should be voting with their feet. The golf course across the creek and the fields across the road are much better uses of that kind of land. But with the fact that entire subdivisions nearby are in the floodways and floodplain I can’t see public officials mustering up the funds to eminent domain the place. Livestock is outranked by housing. They did try but I think she wanted an equivalent property elsewhere and hers was probably cheap due to the location so not ever going to be a straight over trade.
