Texas Lawmakers Rejected Over 60 Flood Safety Bills Since 1960s

Kylie Nidever walked past properties in Kerr County, Texas, still showing damage from floodwaters months after the July 4, 2025, disaster. Nidever’s home in the Bumble Bee Hills neighborhood was untouched by the flooding, one of the deadliest in Texas history.

She questioned why the government had permitted building in areas long known to be dangerous and whether officials would act following the event. After the disaster, some Texas legislators criticized local officials for not investing in flood warning sirens and for problems with the emergency response.

Other elected leaders described the storm as so large that preparation would not have been possible. Lawmakers did not address the underlying issue of development in flood-prone zones. ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reviewed nearly 60 years of legislation and identified more than five dozen flood safety bills that were rejected.

The majority of the 137 people confirmed dead across five counties were staying in places identified by the federal government as at risk for flooding. These were areas where state lawmakers had opportunities to limit development but did not. The most significant measures could have prevented construction in the highest-risk zones, including locations where deaths occurred on July 4, 2025.

Lawmakers also did not pass requirements to elevate buildings in flood-prone areas, restrictions on certain structures near bodies of water, or expanded local authority to limit unsafe development. Texas has at least 650,000 structures in flood-prone areas, more than any other state except Florida, according to an analysis of Federal Emergency Management Agency data by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

The analysis shows that only eight other states have a higher share of structures in such locations. More people have died from floods in Texas, and more national flood insurance claims have been paid, than in nearly any state except Florida and Louisiana since 1980.

Texas trails at least 29 other states, including Florida, that have enacted development standards requiring structures to be built higher in flood-prone areas, a 2020 FEMA report found. Char Miller, a Texas environmental historian at Pomona College, reviewed the news organizations’ findings and stated that enacting such legislation might have reduced the loss of life.

“We need to resist this narrative that this disaster was unpreventable,” said Michael Slattery, director of the Institute for Environmental Studies at Texas Christian University. He added that the conditions resulted from decisions made over decades.

Scientists have noted that climate change is increasing the frequency of heavy storms once considered rare.

Response to 2025 Flooding After the July 4, 2025, flooding, Gov.

Greg Abbott called special legislative sessions to address aspects of the disaster. The only buildings legislators banned from flood-prone areas were youth camps. That measure passed after lobbying by the parents of 25 children and two counselors who died at Camp Mystic.

Some Texas lawmakers have cited the protection of landowners’ rights to assess their own property risks as a reason against additional regulations. None of the top state leaders responded to questions about whether stricter statewide building rules should be enacted.

Abbott’s office stated that he has addressed flooding through funding for mitigation projects. Without changes to rules, many property owners are rebuilding in the same locations near the Guadalupe River. Joan Connor and her husband, David Stearns, survived the flood by holding onto their pergola after water reached chest level in their Bumble Bee Hills home.

The couple, who had paid off the property, decided to rebuild.

Homes were constructed along the Guadalupe River despite local knowledge of its potential for sudden, severe flooding. The National Flood Insurance Program, launched by Congress in 1968, offered insurance in exchange for local enforcement of development standards based on federal flood maps.

In Texas, the program faced resistance from some lawmakers, local leaders and landowners who saw the rules as infringing on property rights and likely to reduce property values. In 1973, following a deadly flood in the Hill Country, two Democratic lawmakers proposed prohibiting all human-use structures in the floodway.

The measure, which went beyond federal requirements, did not pass.