Staff presented this information during a public meeting on October 29 at Bear Creek Community Center in Houston to discuss these plans and gather feedback.

[11] The waters continued to rise, and on August 29, after reaching pool elevation over 108 feet (33 m) above NAVD 1988, the Addicks Reservoir began around the end of the dam near Tanner Road.

As of August 30, 2017, combined controlled discharge rates of Barker and Addicks were 13,700 cubic feet per second (390,000 L/s), and subdivisions surrounding the outlets and downstream past Beltway 8/Sam Houston Tollway experienced significantly increased flooding as Buffalo Bayou further overtopped its banks.

[12] It is estimated the Addicks and Barker reservoirs, along with other federal construction projects on Buffalo Bayou and its tributaries, prevent average annual flood damages of $16,372,000[13] to the city of Houston.

Harris County and Houston City authorities permitted developers to build residential neighborhoods (such as the Lakes on Eldridge subdivision) on this privately-owned land within the basins of the reservoirs.

Beginning in the 1990s, Fort Bend County, which contains a portion of Barker Reservoir, began requiring that plat documents for land within the basin carry a one-sentence disclosure of possible "controlled inundation".

[14] During and after Hurricane Harvey, 7,000 acres (2,800 ha) of private upstream land was deliberately submerged by the USACE operation of the Addicks and Barker dams and reservoirs.

[15] In response, upstream property owners filed a series of lawsuits in the US Court of Federal Claims (CFC), seeking to hold the US government liable for the induced flooding under the "Takings Clause" of the Fifth Amendment.

[17] To that end, and after considering hundreds of applications, the CFC appointed attorneys Armistead "Armi" Easterby, Daniel Charest, and Charles Irvine to serve as co-lead trial counsel for upstream plaintiffs.

The interim report states that high reservoir water levels resulting from USACE's operation of the Addicks and Barker dams "pose unacceptable risks to health and human safety, private property, and public infrastructure" and that "future economic damages from flooding are likely" in the upstream area.

The interim report further indicates that there is inadequate government-owned real estate for dam operations, as more than 20,000 homes and 24,000 parcels of privately owned upstream land are within the areas subject to government-induced flooding.