{"id":468659,"date":"2026-10-17T08:52:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T08:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/468659\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T08:52:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T08:52:16","slug":"harris-county-flood-control-district-director-discusses-projects-bellaire-meyerland-west-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/468659\/","title":{"rendered":"Harris County Flood Control District director discusses projects | Bellaire – Meyerland – West University"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marcus Stuckett, executive director of the county\u2019s flood control district, was appointed<\/a> to his role in June in the wake of the former director\u2019s resignation<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A survivor of Hurricane Harvey, Stuckett said the position is an opportunity to protect residents\u2019 homes, livelihoods and sense of security.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His appointment comes as the district is under pressure to meet spending deadlines for 28 federally-funded disaster recovery and flood mitigation projects in February 2028 and March 2029, respectively. If the roughly $868 million<\/a> in combined funding isn\u2019t spent on time, the Texas General Land Office could move to reclaim it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In an interview with Community Impact, Stuckett discussed transitioning into his role, priorities for the district and the plan to keep projects on track.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tell me about your responsibilities as director and what your day-to-day looks like.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the executive director of the flood control district, I\u2019m in charge of planning, engineering, design and construction and maintenance of flood damage reduction projects. My role is to help the team produce those projects and remove roadblocks and make decisions to help them move forward as rapidly and efficiently as we can.<\/p>\n

Broadly speaking, can you explain what the flood control district is and how your work impacts county residents?\u00a0<\/p>\n

We are a special-purpose district created in 1937 to help with some flooding that happened in a very short span in the early \u201820s and \u201830s. It gives the district some ability to acquire right-of-way, to collect taxes and to develop flood damage reduction projects. Our goal for the residents of Harris County is to try to develop projects that remove that flood risk from homes, as well as reduce the risk.<\/p>\n

You stepped into your role at a time when the flood control district is under pressure to wrap up 28 projects funded through the federal Community Development Block Grants. How have you adjusted to the role since your start in June, and what are your priorities?<\/p>\n

Right now, my priorities are to deliver the projects. But also, I want us to get to a point where we (have) increased responsiveness when it comes to resident requests, or service requests, as well as being transparent. What that looks like is sharing our progress on projects, using our social media, having interviews such as this, as well as communicating our challenges, as well as our successes.<\/p>\n

You worked for the flood control district for seven years before making your return as director. How has your experience and institutional knowledge shaped the way you approach your current role?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s helped a lot because a lot of the projects that we\u2019re working on now are projects that were, when I was engineering division director, that we were sort of starting to develop. It\u2019s helped reduce some of the unknowns. I\u2019m at a point now where I can ask the right questions. I can recall a project saying, \u2018Hey, this is (where) I recall we were in the project and this is where we are now.\u2019 And I think that that\u2019s been one of the biggest helps in me being in this role.<\/p>\n

How did you make the decision to come back? <\/p>\n

I love public works; I\u2019m a huge public works advocate. I love public service. I like helping people. That\u2019s where I feel like I\u2019m fulfilled in the role. Having experienced Harvey myself, I understand that the work we do is more than just doing flood damage reduction projects. You\u2019re affecting people\u2019s homes, not only their homes, but their livelihoods and just that sense of security. Being in this role, I want to be able to provide that benefit and say, \u2018This is how we help the residents of Harris County.<\/p>\n

What would happen if funding isn\u2019t spent for these projects by the deadlines? Is there a repercussion for Harris County or taxpayers?\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Harris County, the funding essentially goes back. But as the district, we have considered all of our options \u2014 if that were to be the case \u2014 to make sure that we complete these projects. Every single project that we\u2019ve identified \u2014 that I will speak to in October \u2014 we intend to execute every single one of those projects regardless of funding source.<\/p>\n

In addition to those projects, what do you think the flood control district needs to tackle over the next few years to make the county more flood resilient?<\/p>\n

I think that we are doing some of that now. We need to spend the funding that we have for projects efficiently. We need to make sure that we are continuing to maintain our infrastructure, which the voters approved in 2024 \u2014 the maintenance plan. Right now, what we\u2019re working on is increasing staffing, vehicles and equipment to take care of some of this, what we\u2019re referring to as \u2018deferred maintenance,\u2019 so that as we develop new projects and we finish these projects that are part of the CDBG [Community Development Block Grants] and part of the bond, that our path forward is simply just maintenance of projects. But we\u2019re also trying to look forward and start developing a planning level of effort that includes resiliency, which the Harris County Flood Resilience plan \u2014 which we are working on \u2014 includes some aspects of flood damage reduction. That plan will include ways for us to work with the different organizations in Harris County to make Harris County more resilient.<\/p>\n

What do you think Harris County residents need to know about the flood control district, or what would you like them to know?<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like the residents of Harris County to know that we are committed to delivering the projects that we promised, that we are committed to being responsive and we are committed to being transparent with the funding and the responsibility that they\u2019ve charged to the district. I\u2019d also like the people of Harris County to understand that these projects take time, and sometimes it feels like they aren\u2019t moving as fast as people would like, and we understand that frustration, and we\u2019re going to work on doing a better job of communicating where we are in our progress and when we expect things to be done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marcus Stuckett, executive director of the county\u2019s flood control district, was appointed to his role in June in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64322,159427,4164,2625,56,58,57,124629],"class_list":["post-468659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-community-development-block-grants","tag-flood-damage-reduction","tag-harris-county-commissioners-court","tag-harris-county-flood-control-district","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-marcus-stuckett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}