After historic floods on the Fourth of July killed more than 130 people in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott vowed state lawmakers would pass transformative legislation, designed to “make sure communities are better, more resilient, and have the resources that they need.”
Just two months later, on Sept. 5, Abbott held a bill signing ceremony surrounded by families who’d lost loved ones in the tragedy. That day, the governor signed a package of flood-related measures into law, including one tightening restrictions for overnight youth camps.
“They wanted laws to be passed so that other parents would not experience the hell that have been through,” Abbott said. “They pleaded for camp safety.”
Now, with the ink on those bills dry, The Texas Newsroom examined what lawmakers accomplished over the summer and asked a leading flood expert if he thinks the state’s changes go far enough.
State lawmaker’s immediate response to flooding in Texas
As recovery efforts continued, the Texas Legislature quickly created a special committee focused on figuring out what went wrong on July Fourth. It was also charged with determining what Texas should change to prevent another mass casualty even like this in the future.
The committee heard from emergency officials, flood victims, and flood experts about what was needed, and crafted legislation accordingly.
State leaders also looked to other parts of Texas. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick suggested placing weather alert sirens along the Guadalupe River, like those found along the San Marcos River.
The cost, he said, shouldn’t be a barrier.
“If a city can’t afford it, then the state will step up,” Patrick said on Fox News days after the flood. “We need to have these in place by the next summer.”
One of the bills just signed into law would help do that by creating a grant program to assist local governments cover the cost of sirens. It also creates statewide guidance on how to install, maintain and operate warning siren systems.
Other new laws require that youth camps and campgrounds create state-approved emergency plans and restrict building cabins in floodplains. Additional legislation lawmaker's passed addressed everything from speeding up dam repairs, to improving weather forecasting, to providing funding for areas hit by flood waters.
Ultimately, state legislators did a lot — and spent over a quarter-billion dollars towards the effort.
‘Grading’ Texas lawmakers’ response to July’s floods: So far, so good
So, did the changes approved by the Texas Legislature this summer hit the mark? And will the state be a safer place to be when the next extreme weather even hits?
Flood expert Upmanu Lall thinks so — at least so far. Lall directs the Columbia Water Center at Columbia University in New York, where he focuses on how to predict and manage floods.
“It's good that they have done this,” he told The Texas Newsroom. “Frankly, given how the political establishment works really slowly on things, the fact that they actually came up with something fairly quickly is a good sign.”
As a professor, Lall compared his view of the flood bills Texas passed to a teacher grading a student.
“This is the midterm exam. Let's give you an A,” Lall said. “But I want to see what's going to happen the rest of the semester.”
Before he gives Texas its final grade, Lall needs to see how things actually get implemented — and how fast. Right now, he said, the state’s new flood legislation is just words on a page.
From here, much of that implementation will fall to The Texas Division of Emergency Management. The agency will be in charge of making sure most of the changes passed by lawmakers are quickly and effectively put in place.
In a statement to The Texas Newsroom, an TDEM spokesperson said the agency remains “committed to working with local, state, and federal partners and stakeholders to ensure Texas communities have the resources they need before, during, and after disasters.”
Lall’s perspective isn’t just noteworthy because he’s an expert on flooding, water systems and risk management. He also knows Texas from his time studying civil engineering at UT-Austin in the late 70s.
He specifically recalled one Hill Country hike along the Guadalupe River where he was struck by how close people were living to flood infrastructure. Specifically, he remembered homes amid detention structures — engineered, dry basins designed to temporarily hold rushes of storm water, then slowly and safely drain it.
“It's small detention structure after small detention structures and people are right next to it. So the vulnerability, at least for those people, should be in their face,” Lall said. “But you don't think about that because you think of this [The Hill Country] as a fun place.”
So what's left to be done?
When Columbia University’s Upmanu Lall lived in Texas, the state being hit by a flood of the magnitude seen in July wasn’t on his mind. But it's something he thinks about a lot today, especially for a state that covers such a large geographic area.
“Let's look at it this way: Let's say that we have 10 separate locations in Texas. Each of them is protected from a hundred-year flood,” Lall said. “That means, on any given year … there's a one in ten chance that one of those guys is getting wiped out."
To him, that means Texas lawmakers need to stay focused on emergency preparedness and response, going beyond alert systems and weather forecasting to how and where things are built.
“The sirens are part of the plan, but there's got to be more,” Lall said.
And that could be on the horizon. While Texas’ special sessions are over, lawmakers haven’t called it a day.
“This is not the end, this is the beginning,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said at a flood hearing in Kerrville. “We will be doing this in the next session and the session after that.”
Going forward, Lall thinks lawmakers should prepare for more than just floods.
“There's a larger agenda that needs to actually get populated, " said Lall, citing Hurricane Harvey in Houston and the vulnerability of many of the state’s dams.
“I'm hoping that now that the alarm has been raised — and the awareness is there — that things will move in that direction.”
