Hays County

As the dust continues to settle after last week’s election, Hays County has been left to grapple with a bit of a political identity crisis: Is it red or blue?

“The burdens imposed by closing the on-campus early voting location fall particularly and disproportionately on the county’s young voters, who are significantly more likely to live on or near campus and are less likely to have easy, immediate access to reliable transportation to vote off-campus,” Beth Stevens, the Texas Civil Right's Project's voting rights legal director, wrote.

Most of the rivers and creeks engorged by Friday's heavy rainfall have reached their highest points and have started to recede. As they do, the residents of hard-hit places, like San Marcos, Bastrop County and Austin's Onion Creek neighborhood, are starting the process of cleaning up and assessing the damage. 

Though the rescue efforts are over, and many donation centers are no longer accepting donated material goods, there are still ways you can help, whether it's by donating money, or making yourself available to volunteer, or bringing in clean clothes for those who lost their belongings. If you're a resident looking for help removing damaged goods or receiving donations, there's information for you as well.

Update Monday: Another round of storms swept through a large part of Central and South Central Texas Monday afternoon, bringing inches of rain, hail, strong winds and some reports of tornadoes touching down.

For more in-depth information on conditions in Austin resulting from Monday's storms, visit our post here, listen to 90.5 FM, and/or follow @KUT on twitter.

Hays County is looking for alternative groundwater supplies. An open Request for Proposals seeks to pipe in water from aquifers that could be tapped to supplement water from the Edwards and Trinity aquifers.

County Commissioner Ray Whisenant (R-Precinct 4) says the existing supply of water appears to be unsustainable with the county's current growth rate.

Hays County is growing so fast that it has to add more voting locations for the November election. “Because the 2010 Census showed a large increase in populations (about 60,000 people more) we are required by state law to have our main early voting site plus one site in each of our Commissioner Precincts,” Hays County Elections Administrator Joyce Cowan said in a statement. 

The voting sites also have to remain open for the entire two weeks of early voting, in addition to Election Day.

In the last presidential election, Hays County had only one main voting site.

Authorities have released information on a brutal assault and attempted murder of a teen lured from an Austin bus stop, including a sketch of the suspect.

From Hays County Crime Stoppers:

On Thursday, March 15, 2012 at approximately 9:45am, a 17-year-old female was lured into a white vehicle in the area of 51st Street and Manor Road in Austin, Travis County, Texas.  At 11:45am, Hays County Sheriff’s Deputies responded to Highway 290 in the area of CR 165, west of Dripping Springs near the Blanco County border, where the victim had been found on the side of the road by a passing motorist.  The victim was transported to the hospital and treated for injuries she sustained during the incident.  The subsequent investigation revealed that the female victim had been physically and sexually assaulted.