Love and marriage, horse and carriage, levee and pumping station–it’s not as poetic, but the latter is a powerful pairing of infrastructure to protect low-lying assets. And a pumping-station expansion project now beginning in Texas shows how drainage-system design has evolved over the past century, benefiting from the experience of older systems like that of New Orleans. click here to view diagram

Velasco Drainage District, Clute, Texas, last month issued notice to proceed on a $33-million project to expand two pumping stations, adding 1.56 million gal per minute to their existing 1.69-million gpm capacity. The district consists of industrialized coastal floodplain on the Gulf of Mexico that has suffered storm-surge flooding in past hurricanes. The land is low and flat. South of Houston, the elevation falls 1 ft per mile to the coast. "An old engineer once told me, ‘When it rains, the water’s home,’" says George Kidwell, chairman of Velasco’s board of supervisors.