State Flood Planning

In 2019, the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 8 directing the creation of the first-ever state flood plan for Texas. Statute requires that all recommended flood mitigation projects be ranked in the state flood plan. The 15 Regional Flood Planning Groups (RFPG), designated by the TWDB in 2020, will submit their amended regional flood plans to TWDB by July 14, 2023. The TWDB will combine the approved regional flood plans into a single state flood plan to be delivered to the Legislature by September 1, 2024.

TWDB Seeking Preliminary Feedback on Potential Policy Recommendations for the DRAFT 2024 State Flood Plan

The TWDB is holding a public Work Session on Thursday, April 4, at 9am to seek preliminary public feedback on the potential policy recommendations that the Board is considering for inclusion in Texas’ first draft state flood plan. The work session will be held at Barbara Jordan State Office Building, 1601 Congress Ave, Austin, Texas; RM 2.035. The work session will be in-person or as a web-viewing option only. Please fill in the following form, one per policy recommendation, to provide feedback on any of the recommendations.

To be considered by the TWDB, comments must be entered into this Form no later than April 11th, 2024.

Note that the input received during the work session and through this online form, will be taken into consideration as the TWDB finalizes the 2024 Draft State Flood Plan. Note that the public will also have another opportunity to comment on those policy recommendations that are included in the full Draft 2024 State Flood Plan. Following TWDB consideration of public comments on the draft plan, the final 2024 State Flood Plan must be adopted by September 1, 2024.

Soliciting Stakeholder Feedback on Proposed Methods for Ranking Recommended Flood Mitigation Projects

Submission Deadline Has Ended. Contact us with any questions.

The Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) solicited public feedback on proposed methods for ranking recommended Flood Management Evaluations (FME), Flood Mitigation Projects (FMP), Flood Management Strategies (FMS) in the 2024 State Flood Plan. The intent of the TWDB ranking methods for the state flood plan is to provide a consistent approach to be used across all Texas regions to systematically address, in general, the flood hazard with most population, properties and critical facilities at risk first in the state during a 1% annual chance flood. The proposed process aims to result in a ranking with focus on (a) severity of flood risk and (b) reduction of flood risk and impact to life and property as required by 86th Texas Legislature Senate Bill 8. For maximum transparency, the actual spreadsheets with ranking criteria, weightings, the project data, and the resulting rankings were provided to stakeholders as part of this feedback solicitation process.

To keep with the bottom-up approach of the regional flood planning program, TWDB has elected to utilize only RFPG-reported data for ranking. The resulting rankings are based on the reported technical merits of each RFPG-recommended FME, FMP, and FMS.

Please use the links below to download supporting information and each Excel workbook for ranking FME, FMP, and FMS, respectively. The data provided in each workbook was compiled from the fifteen regional flood plans. This data is considered DRAFT data and provided for ranking feedback purposes ONLY.

Note: While inclusion in the state flood plan is a requirement for eligibility for future FIF project funding, the associated rankings are not intended for allocating state funding. Future funding decisions will occur through a separate TWDB process if and when funds are appropriated by the Texas Legislature. How the state flood plan project ranking may be considered in future flood project funding prioritization and allocation processes remains to be determined although it is anticipated that the state flood plan ranking will be at least one of the considerations.

Webinars

For questions about the State Flood Plan, please contact Reem Zoun or Tressa Olsen

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