For 60 Years, Texas Legislature Rejected Over 60 Flood Safety Bills Limiting Development In Known Flood Zones

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After last summer’s disaster, some Texas legislators scolded local officials for their decision not to invest in flood warning sirens and for the chaotic emergency response. Other elected leaders excused the storm as so massive that no one could have prepared for it. But lawmakers failed to address the underlying problem: They have repeatedly rejected bills that could protect residents in the state’s most dangerous, flood-prone areas, an investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found.

The majority of the 137 people confirmed to have died across five counties in the July 4 tragedy were staying in places identified by the federal government as being at risk for flooding, the newsrooms found. These were places where state lawmakers had a chance to curb development, but didn’t. The newsrooms reviewed nearly 60 years of legislation and identified over five dozen flood safety bills rejected by lawmakers. The most consequential measures, experts said, could have saved lives by stopping construction in the areas at greatest risk for flooding, including where people later died on July 4.

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Texas has more buildings in flood-prone areas — at least 650,000 structures — than any other state besides Florida, according to a ProPublica and Tribune analysis of Federal Emergency Management Agency data. The analysis shows that only eight other states have a higher share of structures in flood-prone spots than Texas. More people have died from floods in Texas, and more national flood insurance claims have been paid out here since 1980, than in nearly any state with the exception of Florida and Louisiana. Yet Texas trails at least 29 other states, including Florida, that have passed development standards that force structures to be built higher in flood-prone areas, according to a 2020 FEMA report.

“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. “The disaster is just shaped by policy choices made over what I thought were just years.” Instead, Slattery said, it was decades.The need for stronger flood protections only grows more urgent, scientists say, as climate change makes heavy storms previously considered once in a lifetime more likely.

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https://www.texastribune.org/2026/05/06/texas-legislature-flood-protection-bills-failed-july-4/