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Posted on 07/08/2025 9:33:22 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Nearly a decade before catastrophic flash flooding in Kerr County…several local officials were hard at work convincing their peers to buy into a new early flood warning system. The once “state of the art” program installed along the Guadalupe River back in the 1980s was in desperate need of an upgrade, they argued…
“I’m not trying to put a dollar on a life or a flood, but the fact of the matter is floods do happen, and we need to be prepared for them,” then-Kerr County Commissioner Bob Reeves noted during a series of public meetings that began in 2016. And, his former colleague Tom Moser pointed out, “We also have more summer camps than anybody else along the Guadalupe River.”
The wide-ranging discussions back then — captured in transcripts archived online — proved to be a chilling precursor to the disaster that unfolded early on July 4…
But the new warning system never became reality. Though local officials agreed to spend $50,000 on an engineering study, which made specific recommendations for such a project in 2016, they never secured the $1 million they estimated would be needed to implement it – despite asking for help from state officials at least three separate times.
“We never were successful in getting that funding, or putting the matching funding with it to do anything,” said Moser, who retired in 2021, in a phone interview. He said he hopes the county can “go back to the drawing board on this, and hopefully it’ll be a model that could be used all over the United States.”
(Excerpt) Read more at houstonchronicle.com ...
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Hindsight is always 20/20.
State of Texas has been running in the black for at least that long, so there is no excuse for not funding it. Currently the state is dropping big bucks on school security. Flood warning is also security
Why couldn’t Kerr Country prioritize the flood warning system and pay for it themselves? What was a higher priority budget item? Why did they have to push those costs to the state?
Gate. Horse. Barn.
Don’t they have sirens? Anywhere there are tornadoes they should have them.
bttt
But back in 2016 it was foresight
The Houston Chronicle finds at least one local official and who wants to blame the state.
But the question you raise is legitimate, Why didn't the county pony up, or at least why didn't they shut down the camps?
Trump was president 8 years ago, so it’s still Trump’s fault.
/sarc
My guess, is that this county has a small population, and a small budget, and that $1 ,million would bust their local budget.
Or would bust the budget without a big local tax increase.
They could have raised camp fees a bit over ten years to pay for it.
An upgraded flood warning system would have been nice to have but probably would have made little difference
There were warnings in place that should have put people on notice to evacuate to higher ground or to have someone stay up during the night to monitor the situation
Kerr was hit with so much rain so fast that people had little time to respond by the time the flood sensors showed flash flood waters were on the way
Kerr County residents did not want federal funding that could’ve been spent on flood sirens because the money came from a Democratic admin
https://legacy.co.kerr.tx.us/commcrt/minutes/2021/110821%28CC%29.txt
The county can’t afford $1 million? Bullfeathers. Sounds like blame misdirection to me. That’s a handful of SUV cruisers and overweight sheriff’s deputies for a year.
Voters declined paying for from what I've read..
Far, far, less than the costs the county will incur now.
Yeah, but lots of stuff never make it into budgets. It’s the way of government.
You tell ‘em!!😄👍
They should have requested the grant from the EPA for climate change readiness. I would have used a sarc tag, but unfortunately this is the state of the country. All sorts of cities, counties, and states have received billions for less in the name of climate change.
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