Dozens Of TX Counties Rejected Funding For Warning Systems After 7/4 Floods; Too Expensive, Unlike Evil Biden FEMA Grant

[hatrack]

Three weeks after flash floods in Texas’ Hill Country killed more than 100 people, state lawmakers chastised Kerr County leaders for rejecting money a year earlier to create a warning system that could have alerted residents to rapidly rising water. Several lashed out as a Kerr official representing the local river authority tried to explain why it declined money from a $1.4 billion state fund to help guard against destructive flooding.

One state senator on the special legislative committee tasked with investigating the deadly floods called the decision “pathetic.” Another said it was “disturbing.” State Rep. Drew Darby, a Republican from San Angelo, said the river authority simply lacked the will to pay for the project. But Kerr leaders were not the only ones who rejected the state’s offer, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found. In the five years since the fund’s launch, at least 90 local governments turned down tens of millions of dollars in state grants and loans.

Leaders from about 30 local governments that the news organizations spoke with said the state grants paid for so little of the total project costs that they simply could not move forward, even with the program’s offer to cover the rest through interest-free loans. Many hoped the state program would provide grants that paid the bulk of the costs, such as the ones from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which typically supply at least 75%. They believed that they could raise the rest.

Instead, many were offered far less. In some cases, the state offered grants that paid for less than 10% of the funding needed. In Kerr’s case, the state awarded a $50,000 grant for a $1 million flood warning system, or roughly 5%. It said the river authority could borrow the rest and repay it over the next three decades, but local officials were not sure they would be able to pay back the $950,000 — and failure to do so could carry state sanctions. City officials in Robinson, located between Dallas and Austin, sought about $2.4 million in funding to buy and tear down homes directly in the floodway. The state offered $236,000 and required that the city conduct an engineering study that would have eaten up more than half of those grant funds, the city manager told the news organizations.

EDIT

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/12/03/texas-kerr-county-state-grants-flood-warning-system/

[Walleye]

1. Well, I guess Governor Abbott thought it was more important to send his national guard to the border

And fly immigrants all over the country to “blue states“ as if we are afraid of brown people like they are. How much of that money could’ve been put toward flood protection