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San Antonio River Authority has a new plan to prevent flash flooding deaths. Will Texas fund it?

In the weeks after a heavy June 12 rain swept multiple cars off the road in San Antonio leaving 13 people dead, local officials say an investigation has uncovered some relatively low cost safety measures that could be implemented quickly to prevent such tragedies in the future.
On Tuesday, Bexar County Commissioners approved roughly $10 million to fix and improve rain gauges at low-water crossings, update flood projections and install gates that officials can proactively close when water is expected to rise above the roadway.
The enhancements are expected to be completed in about a year, with an ultimate goal of automating the gates to respond on their own in times of heavy rainfall.
Such swift action comes as Bexar County leaders have been closely watching the fallout from Kerrville’s flooding, during which top elected leaders and law enforcement officers were criticized for being asleep or out of town as more than 130 people were killed by catastrophic rainfall.
“The review has been quite brutal,” Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai said of the Texas Legislature’s investigation into the events in Kerrville.
“It has reminded me what my primary job as county judge is, and that’s to protect this county,” he continued. “I better damn well make sure that if there’s any weather events or catastrophic events … I better be up and at them.”
Bexar County is already in a wildly different position from Kerr County due to a series of dams put in place decades ago that operate autonomously and slow raging water.
There are 28 of them within the county and 14 elsewhere downstream — but not one on Beitel Creek, where most of the casualties occurred on June 12.

While dams are an expensive, long-term solution, Steve Metzler, director of water resources at the San Antonio River Authority, said that other water management agencies across the country have had some success using gauges and gates to more quickly address loss of life issues in dramatic flood situations.
“Harris County Flood Control District in Houston had a similar setup to what we have now, where we focus on rain gauges, and they switched to a stream gauge system to speed up response time,” said Metzler, whose agency will oversee the project in Bexar County. “That is what we’re looking to switch to, so there is a precedent for it.”
San Antonio River Authority is also planning to meet with the Colorado River Authority, which has similar technology in use.
Tuesday’s Commissioners Court meeting included a lengthy discussion of whether money should be used on other approaches, such as creating an Amber Alert-type warning for drivers near flood situations — or a more wholesale shift of county resources to account for flood infrastructure needs.
Some critics even argued that plans to raise the county’s venue tax to help pay for a new NBA arena should be sidelined until leaders address the pressing flood control needs in one of the most flood-prone regions of the country.
But the plan for gauges and gates was approved unanimously, and County Manager David Smith vowed to find money in this year’s budget — even if it means doubling the county’s contribution to make up for the City of San Antonio’s anticipated portion of the bill.
“I want [San Antonio River Authority General Manager Derek Boese] to walk out of this meeting and get to work,” Smith said. “So you’re going to have your money one way or another.”
A regional approach
Boese, who previously managed hurricane defense efforts in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, actually has much bigger plans for San Antonio’s watershed.
“Water does not care about political boundaries,” he said in a recent interview with the Report. “That’s why [water management strategy is] built on the watershed basis.”

Though state officials have largely agreed with that sentiment, funding projects that way is more complicated.
Boese chairs a regional flood planning group that includes parts of Bandera, Wilson, Karnes and Goliad counties, set up after Hurricane Harvey by the Texas Water Development Board, which made the San Antonio River Authority its administrator.
“The state has provided funding essentially for data collection and some basic analysis up to this point,” Boese said of the regional flood groups.
But these recent tragedies will soon test whether lawmakers are willing to put real money behind the solutions they’ve come up with.
The San Antonio River Authority has identified 95 gauge locations needed in the region’s southern basin — outside of Bexar County — totaling about $33 million. Additionally, Boese said, there are four northern counties with streams feeding into Bexar County, but that aren’t included in San Antonio’s Region 12.
Flood warning systems and disaster preparedness are on lawmakers’ agenda for a the special legislative session, and Boese said his agency has asked the legislature to cover that remaining portion of the work.
But the Texas Water Development Board hasn’t deemed many of this region’s projects a high priority in recent years, Boese said, in part because “we are far ahead of virtually everybody else in the state in terms of having data, having analysis, and knowing what flood plains are.”
Of the roughly $670 million distributed through its Flood Infrastructure Fund, just two Region 12 projects were selected: $5.4 million drainage improvements in Bandera County and a $600,000 flood protection study in Karnes County.
“We’re in ongoing discussions with the Water Development Board about how we can improve our chances, and why we didn’t see any funding [in the last round],” Boese said.