This article is co-published with The Texas Newsroom , the Houston Chronicle and ProPublica as part of an initiative to report on how power is wielded in Texas. Also, sign up for The Brief , our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

The devastating flooding in Houston caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 killed dozens of people, inundated hundreds of thousands of homes and left the community desperate for a solution.

Since then, local flood experts have extensively studied the possibility of a multibillion-dollar tunnel system across Harris County. Studies have focused on the construction of pipelines, 30 to 40 feet in diameter, that could ferry massive amounts of water out to the Gulf in the event of a storm.

Now, after years of researc

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