District G Honors

Bayou Preservation Association

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The Bayou Preservation Association’s mission is to “protect and restore the richness and diversity of our waterways through activism, advocacy, collaboration and education.”  With more than 2,500 miles of waterways in “The Bayou City,” protecting and transforming the bayous into beautiful “ribbons of green” makes good environmental sense.

Through activism and advocacy, BPA responds strongly to threats to our area’s bayous and streams through grass roots organization and promotion of viable, economically responsible alternatives to destructive channelization (sides dug out and uniformly sloped) for the region’s storm water management.

BPA collaborates with other environmental groups in coordinating the clean-up of area bayous, as well as planting trees along their banks, as well as working closely with the City of Houston and Harris County Flood Control in consulting about water quality and flood management issues.

The education aspect of BPA is realized through dissemination of information on conservation of bayous and waterways at festivals, seminars, professional meetings; by speaking to schools and community groups and through its web site.

Major programs of BPA include:

• “Eyes on the Bayou”: We identify threats to bayous, including removal of invasive, exotic plant species which are harmful to the native vegetation that keep the bayous healthy and mitigate flooding.  With Harris County Flood Control, we work to remove major debris in the bayous, including carts from the “shopping cart graveyard” in Buffalo Bayou.
• Trash Bash®: BPA coordinates Terry Hershey Park on Buffalo Bayou and Collins Park on Cypress Creek for this annual Houston/Galveston clean-up event involving hundreds of community volunteers (this year’s event to be held Saturday, March 26).
• Annual Water Symposium: This is the signature event of the Bayou Preservation Association and brings together interested stakeholders in government, business, academia and the non-profit sector to discuss a particular aspect of our most precious resource–water.
• Paddle Trails: The Bayou Preservation Association and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department took the lead on the Buffalo Bayou paddle trail, which was named an official state paddling trail in 2009.  The longest urban paddle trail in the state, it offers an amazing canoe or kayak experience to paddlers with its nine segments totaling 26 miles.  BPA is working on Cypress Creek as the next major paddling trail in Houston.