State Flood Planning
Interactive State Flood Plan Viewer
In 2019, the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 8 directing the creation of the first-ever state flood plan for Texas. The state flood plan brings together the findings of the 15 river-basin-based regional flood plans and makes legislative and floodplain management recommendations to guide state, regional, and local flood control policy.
The Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) adopted Texas' inaugural 2024 State Flood Plan on August 15th, 2024, to be delivered to the Legislature by September 1, 2024. The regional and state flood planning processes recur in five-year cycles.
The 2024 State Flood Plan represents Texas' first attempt to perform comprehensive planning to reduce flood risk and take a broad look at flood hazard across the state. A tremendous amount of information was generated by the 15 Regional Flood Planning Groups (RFPG), through the efforts of more than 350 planning group members, their sponsors, and technical consultants, who held over 550 public meetings during the historic first cycle of regional flood planning. The transparent process with a bottom-up approach aims to identify who and what might be exposed to flooding; identify the state's major flood risk reduction infrastructure; consider existing floodplain management practices or lack thereof; and identify and recommend flood risk reduction solutions across the state. The recommended flood risk reduction solutions include flood management evaluation, flood mitigation projects, and flood management strategies.
This plan sets forth thousands of specific, actionable evaluations, projects, and strategies (costs and sponsors included) that clearly demonstrate a path forward to reduce the risk and impact of existing flood risk and avoid the creation of future flood risks.
Timeline
The 15 RFPGs, designated by the TWDB in 2020, submitted the first sets of regional flood plans by January 10th, 2023 , and amended regional flood plans to TWDB by July 14th, 2023. The TWDB approved the 15 amended regional flood plans on March 5th, 2024. The draft 2024 State Flood Plan was released for public comment from May 10 to June 17, 2024, with a public hearing held on May 24, 2024, in Austin, Texas at the TWDB.
For questions about the State Flood Plan, please contact Reem Zoun or Tressa Olsen