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JULY J ULY 2 2026 026
a monthly publication from the City of Nassau Bay NOTE FROM THE MAYOR Dear Friends, Neighbors, and Citizens,
This is a friendly reminder that Hurricane Season is upon us and has started already with our first named storm of the season “Arthur”. The city has seen more than its share of rain this season already. Please prepare yourself and your family with an emergency plan in case more severe tropical events hit. These plans should include having all of your important paperwork, medicines, water, food, supplies and most importantly a predetermined evacuation location such as a hotel, or family and friends to stay with and ride out the storm. The amount of time to react can be very short with hotel rooms filling almost instantaneously, supplies disappearing, and access time for safety deposit boxes and such taking 34 hours. Please be safe and prepare a plan. Also, I would like to update everyone on significant progress City Staff and Council have made to reduce flooding throughout our City, our streets and our homes. The City has received slightly less than $180,000 in FEMA grants to complete the engineering work for 3 major projects in order to make a step change improvement in our ability to protect our citizens and evacuation during major storms. The 3 projects are: 1) To dredge Lake Nassau to a uniform depth of 8 feet and upgrade power and pumping station to 480V 3-phase power. Many of you may not know that approximately 90% of the rain that falls in Nassau Bay ends up draining to Lake Nassau. One inch of rainfall across our city creates 3-4 inches of water rise to our lake. Our current ability to draw down the water level in the Lake is at most 12 inches because the Lake is just too shallow to allow us to safely draw it down without a risk of a fish kill. That means we can only properly fight a 3-4 inch rain fall before water begins to back up into our neighborhood. It’s one of the reasons why we see flooding occurring in major downpours of 3+ inches of rain over a short period of time. If we can pull the lake down 3 feet of water height and upgrade our pumps due to enhanced power, we would have the capability to fight up to at least 12-inch rain events. The side benefit for this project would be to return Lake Nassau to a recreational pond for the residents and also finally eliminate the algae/hydrilla growth we are experiencing; 2) Our second project is to extend 480V 3-phase power to all 3 major pumping stations on Upper Bay Rd and upgrade the pump stations to larger pumps to exploit the enhanced power to move easily 5X the amount of water. In addition, you probably have noticed the temporary poles installed by the road heading into David Braun Park. This is a line (paid for entirely by Centerpoint) to bring 480V 3-phase power to the entrance to the park. This will allow us to tie in these first 2 projects with our main emergency generator at our water plant so that we never lose power to our flood pumps if we have a catastrophic power outage. We will be able to keep our streets clear; and 3) The last FEMA project is to add a new storm sewer line to significantly increase the amount of water drainage for Davon Lane. All of these engineering projects are being totally funded by FEMA grants and will be written in the proper way to receive additional FEMA funding to complete the projects.
NEW PUBLIC WORKS DIRECTOR In June, Elias Jahen was appointment as the City of Nassau Bay’s new Public Works Director. Elias has demonstrated a strong commitment to the City, its employees, and our residents throughout his time with Nassau Bay. As Public Works Director, Elias will continue leading the department’s efforts to maintain and improve the infrastructure and services that keep our community running smoothly. Please join us in wishing Elias continued success as he begins this new chapter. We are confident that under his leadership, the Public Works Department will continue to achieve great things for the City of Nassau Bay. Congratulations, Elias!
These efforts do not include the work City Staff has done and is doing refurbishing current pump stations to keep them at capacity, keeping our flood berms/dikes at 6-foot flood barrier levels, and continual upgrading of street inlets to maximize the street water drainage.
Be safe,
Phil Johnson
Mayor, City of Nassau Bay
BAY AREA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Keep Nassau Bay patriotism rolling with this special concert. JULY 24th at 7:00 PM at David Braun Park Pavilion This Parks & Recreation Presentation will be a fun family event! Please see our website and Facebook for more info.
NASSAU BAY CITY HALL | 1800 SPACE PARK DRIVE, SUITE 200 | NASSAU BAY, TX 77058 | 281.333.4211