West Street Recovery

West Street Recovery formed after Hurricane Harvey made landfall on August 25, 2017 and inundated large portions of Houston’s East End, including the Second Ward and Fifth Ward neighborhoods the NHHIP corridor would later target. The organization built a neighborhood-by-neighborhood mutual aid and disaster recovery network, working directly with households to navigate the Federal Emergency Management Agency process, secure repairs, and address the chronic flooding conditions that Harvey exposed.

The disaster relief work gave West Street Recovery a dense relational network in precisely the communities that TxDOT’s NHHIP corridor would affect. When the NHHIP fight intensified after TxDOT’s 2020 Final Environmental Impact Statement, West Street Recovery brought that network into the coalition, providing the mobilization base that Air Alliance Houston’s administrative expertise and Stop TxDOT I-45’s legal and organizing work needed.

West Street Recovery frames its work as environmental and economic justice organizing. It connects the chronic flooding that Harvey exposed, a product of decades of racially differentiated infrastructure investment, to the displacement that the NHHIP would accelerate, arguing that communities bearing the worst climate risks should not also bear the worst displacement burdens from infrastructure projects that serve regional rather than local transportation needs.