Need for Watershed-Wide Solutions to Ensure Flood Resilience
2/19/26 – Texas 2036 and the American Flood Coalition hosted an informative seminar on 2/17/26. It emphasized lessons learned from other states that help ensure flood resilience. One of the dominant themes of the day was the need for watershed-wide flood solutions. Without watershed-wide solutions, upstream communities can create the conditions of their own future flooding while putting downstream communities on an expensive flood-mitigation treadmill.
About the Sponsors
The mission of Texas 2036 is to enable Texans to make policy decisions through accessible data, long-term planning and statewide engagement. Its goal is to make Texas the best place to live and work. 2036 refers to Texas’ upcoming bicentennial year.
The American Flood Coalition (AFC) is a bipartisan, member-driven coalition working at all levels of government to scale innovative solutions to the country’s toughest flood-adaptation challenges.
A Watershed-Based Approach to Flooding
Dr. Ruth Akintoye kicked off the first presentation with a reminder that the new Texas State Flood Plan is organized along watershed boundaries. And not just sub-watersheds, but entire river basins. That’s because floodwater does not respect jurisdictional boundaries.
“This requires communities to collaborate regionally and also to coordinate with the state,” said Akintoya.
Akintoya gave a shout-out to more than 50 Texans for their leadership on flooding issues and securing more than $4 billion to fund flood and water projects across the state. She singled out Congressman Dan Crenshaw by name.
As a group, they’re trying to bring a 360-degree view of flooding to everyone in the state. “Texas is already a leader in how states approach flood resilience,” said Akintoya. “Yet we all know that resilience is not static and it never fully gets checked off.”
Benefits of a Watershed-Wide Approach
Throughout the seminar, speakers kept referring to the benefits of a watershed-wide approach to flood resilience. They include:
- Comprehensive solutions where the pieces work better together
- Saving money through various techniques
- Better flood prediction
- Increased coordination when pursuing funding from partners at various levels of government.
Florida’s Always-Ready Long-Range Plan
Former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, Chris Sprowls, amplified those thoughts. He talked about the passage of Florida’s landmark “Always Ready” legislation. AFC called it “the nation’s most comprehensive state-level flood resilience and adaptation initiative.”
The initiative positioned Florida as a leader in preparing communities for rising flood risks. The Florida Plan looks 30 years into the future. Sprowls talked about similarities between Texas and Florida. Namely, both are hubs for domestic migration.
“People are coming to find a better life for their families and a pathway to prosperity. But the downside of that is that we have to plan further into the future,” said Sprowls.
“In Florida,” said Sprowls, “we think about water from a watershed perspective.” In the past, “we weren’t doing the planning and making the investments really needed to keep our communities safe.”
New Texas Flood Plan Based on River-Basin-Wide Approach
Former executive director of the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB), Jeff walker, talked about the river-basin-wide approach in the first Texas State Flood Plan. The total cost of recommendations was $51 billion. “But to give some perspective, the losses associated with Hurricane Harvey were over $125 billion. That’s from one storm,” he said.
One of the first things Texas learned, said Walker, was that “a large, large majority of the flood maps were out of date.”
“The FEMA maps did not give a full picture of the risk or pinpoint mitigation measures,” he added.”Except for the larger metropolitan areas, most cities and counties do not have a good picture of flood risks. As you can imagine, many cities need technical assistance to help them identify such risk.”
Even worse, Walker said, “Many entities cannot access funds because they do not have a good plan for how to use them. And there is not a good mechanism for flood funding at the city level – especially small cities – because they do not have a source of [matching] funds for such projects.”
Walker believes one of the biggest impacts of the State Flood Plan is that state, local, and watershed-level districts are finally engaging with one another about projects. “It’s not happening in little silos anymore,” he said. He believes that “gives one dollar the power of two.”
“There are more than 1,200 flood managers in Texas, and some of them hold 3 or 4 hats.”
Jeff Walker, Former Exec. Dir., TWDB
He referred to mayors and city managers responsible for flood projects “they don’t know how to do.” A river-basin-wide flood-control district would put that expertise at their disposal.
Fast Growth Argues For Wider Outlook
Florida’s Sprowls fielded many of the questions during Q&A. Several questions addressed fast growth. “It’s really important to fold vulnerabilities into future development plans,” he said. “As population grows and economic development booms in new areas, you need to understand how risk scales relevant to that development. And you can make smart choices to mitigate that risk.”
Texas State Rep. Dennis Paul sponsored such a bill in 2025 to expand Harris County Flood Control District’s geographic scope, but it never made it out of the Natural Resources Committee. Rep. Paul reportedly plans to introduce it again in 2027.
As awareness grows about the benefits of flood-control districts that cover entire river basins, he may have better luck next time. It’s important. The state flood plan shows that the San Jacinto Basin (Region 6) has the largest flood-mitigation needs in the state…by a wide margin.
See the entire hour-long seminar on the Texas 2036 website.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 2/19/26
3096 Days since Hurricane Harvey
