Climate Hero Ensures Houston is Well-Engineered for the Future

With a passion for water management and studying how humans interact with the natural world, Carol Ellinger Haddock, a licensed Professional Engineer, is Zurich North America’s Climate Hero.

Nearly three decades of experience in civil engineering and urban planning have earned Haddock her current position as Director of Public Works for the City of Houston. Among her many responsibilities, she is charged with ensuring Houston’s infrastructure is maintained, evaluated and improved to keep the fourth largest city in the U.S., with a population of nearly 2.5 million, a hub for so many industries and one of the most thriving cities in America.

Managing the Water Issue

A native of Uvalde, in south Texas, Haddock grew up where water was always a primary concern to the local economy. Farming and ranching were big industries, and her grandfather spent his life as a farmer and water well driller.

“From an early age, I was having discussions about aquifers, watersheds and how farmers and ranchers were planning to use or conserve their water, depending on the weather,” recalled Haddock. “This fostered my interest in how people respond to the environment around them and how we can better prepare for natural hazards, whether they be storms, droughts or any number of severe weather conditions.”

Haddock has translated this into her life’s work. After beginning her career as an engineering consultant, she joined the Harris County Flood Control District, where she saw the opportunity to implement meaningful initiatives that would help Houston and Harris County better manage their flood risk.

“Being a coastal city, you can imagine we face a range of water-related challenges in everything from conservation to flood mitigation,” said Haddock. “Our mission is to make the city more resilient by making smart decisions with resources we are able to control and better preparing for things such as extreme weather events that are beyond our control.”

Since becoming Director of Public Works, Haddock and her team have expanded a range of programs focused on protecting the city from floods, including:

• Installing a citywide speed monitoring program, which can be used by drivers during storms to monitor slowdowns in traffic, potentially due to flooding on low lying roads;
• Advocating for “green stormwater,” whereby developers are incentivized to use natural features and the surrounding landscape to increase water absorption and subsequently reduce water-related risks during heavy rain;
• Working with residents living in floodplains to identify housing in less vulnerable areas; and
• Updating building codes and drainage systems to ensure structures and roadways are protected from events such as hurricanes and extreme rain.

Leading Broader Sustainability

While Houston’s location on the Gulf Coast keeps water at the top of Haddock’s concerns, she and her team are leading a range of programs to ensure Houston’s long-term sustainability.

“Hurricanes and other water-related challenges are certainly a reality for a city in our location,” said Haddock. “However, we also have a firm understanding that we need to have an eye on a broad range of risks facing our city and take proactive steps to address them.”

Haddock helped to launch the Resilient Houston framework, under which the default source of energy for all equipment the city uses will be electric, low emission or hybrid within a decade. This comes on the back of Houston, a center of the U.S. oil and gas industry, achieving 100% of its electricity portfolio coming from renewable sources.

Haddock and her team also work to ensure all new infrastructure initiatives in the Houston region address and compensate for their environmental impact. The City of Houston has stepped up to lead the Galveston Bay Park Plan. This exciting project is part of an overall coastal protection system. It will integrate widening of the Houston Ship Channel, build a levee, and construct a world class park system. The most exciting environmental feature is building on a previous ship channel project that used dredge material to create marsh and upland habitat areas. This will make beneficial use of dredge material while supporting wetland habitats, such as marshes, rookeries and oyster reefs.

Path Forward

Haddock is encouraged by the progress Houston and numerous cities around the world have made both in their attitudes and actions to deal with a changing climate.

“We are taking steps in the right direction, but we are not fast enough yet,” she said. “From a public works and infrastructure perspective, there are immense opportunities to rethink how we construct and maintain our various systems to make them more efficient and resilient.”

One way to do this is to focus on adaptable infrastructure. Most bridges, tunnels, etc. are currently built with projected lifespans that inevitably seem to be stretched past their expiration date. Haddock calls for a focus on adaptability by constructing new projects in a way that they can be changed, modified, or even repurposed to adapt to changing conditions.

“These projects also have immense potential for economic benefits beyond the environment,” added Haddock. “Focusing on green infrastructure creates new opportunities up and down the economic ladder in all sorts of areas from design to construction to maintenance.”

Haddock’s hope is that we see accelerated investment in green infrastructure and other creative solutions that will both lessen our impact on the environment and make population centers more comfortable and safer places to live in their natural settings.

It is Haddock’s holistic thinking and forward-looking solutions that make her Zurich North America’s Climate Hero!