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STORY: Residents of Kashmere Gardens will be meet next Tuesday with officials from the Harris County Flood District. They'll be discussing a proposed plan to widen Hunting and Halls Bayou. Numerous people living along the bayou may have to move if the flood district decides to demolish their homes as part of the project. This has longtime residents like 43-year-old Deborah Butler upset. "It's really going to devastate a lot of people, especially older people, older people who can't afford to start all over." Kashmere Gardens is a historic neighborhood. Located in Northeast Houston, it was one of the first areas where blacks bought property in the city. Today, it's mostly inhabited by older blacks and Hispanic families. The Harris County Flood District says it has documented widespread flooding on numerous occasions in the area and Precinct One Commissioner El Franco Lee says the project is needed to protect 30,000 other homes in the region from flooding. But Kashmere activist Anna Gray says she knows many residents here who have never flooded. "We have not had massive flooding in this area. We've had two major floods, we've had one back in Carla, which I believe was in 1961 and then Tropical Storm Allison, 2001, which was a 40-year span. That's unrealistic to me to say that we're persistently flooding for two floods in 40 years." Along with other residents, Gray worries about the effects such a project could have on inhabitants who are elderly or less well off. "You know a home is more than just a structure, it's a sense of community, a support system, it's people you've come to depend on and that you look forward to seeing every day. When you start moving people around, you're also destroying that structure as well." Next Tuesday's meeting will take place at 6 p.m. at the Kashmere Multi-Service Center at 4802 Lockwood. Sarah Richards, KPFT News, Houston. E-mail Sarah Richards at news@kpft.org . This story was broadcast on March 19, 2003.