[Reem Zoun] The Texas Water Development Board is charged
with helping the regional flood planning groups
deliver the first sets of regional flood plans,
the 15 regional flood plans, by January of 2023.
These regional flood plans are to come together
as Texas' first-ever state flood plan,
which is due to the legislature by September of 2024.
The Board designated on October 1 those initial
regional flood planning group members.
The regional flood planning group meetings are publicly
posted; they are under the Texas Open Meetings Act.
So, the first set of meetings that happened
were posted both on our website
and also on the website of the Secretary of the State.
It's a twofold effort-reducing the risk of flooding
that currently exists and also working towards preventing
creation of new flood risk in the future.
[Floyd Hartman] This program is going to be the
future of solutions
for Texans, whether it's in Amarillo,
whether it's in Houston, whether it's the Rio Grande Valley,
El Paso-it doesn't matter where you're at in Texas.
This is an avenue that didn't exist
a year ago to solve problems.
[Reem Zoun] People in the region know their areas best.
[Floyd Hartman] The snow and ice problem that
we have in the Panhandle
is not prevalent in the Houston area.
Those two things are not easily addressed by the same,
or you would address them with resources
that are unnecessary in Houston
that are very necessary in Amarillo.
[Suzanne Scott] The City of San Antonio is in
what we know as Flash Flood Alley.
Our biggest threat from flooding
is because of the velocities of the rain that falls
on the top of our watershed
and then comes down from the topography change.
[Joe Hinojosa] Here in the lower Rio Grande Valley,
things are flat.
You're almost looking at a tabletop scenario,
so it doesn't take much water to create
or wreak havoc for us.
In the Hill Country, it's a little different.
In West Texas, obviously,
they have different issues to contend with.
So, one size does not fit all.
[Reem Zoun] One thing that's really important
for flood planning is,
as we all know, water is not going to stop
at our jurisdictional boundaries.
That's why the flood planning group
does not look like water planning groups.
They're not jurisdictional boundary-based,
they're not county-based; they are river basin based,
they're watershed-based. This is where the water goes.
[Russ Poppe] Water doesn't understand a political boundary,
or even a municipal city boundary.
But they understand watershed boundaries.
And so, for example, we've got 22 watersheds
in Harris County. They all are different.
They all respond differently when we get rainfall.
And so, they all require a custom-fit approach
to how we solve flooding within those 22 watersheds.
[Reem Zoun] When we do comprehensive statewide
flood planning process,
we are encouraging collaboration between those
upstream communities and downstream communities.
What the upstream communities does impact the downstream
communities, and sometimes actually vice versa.
So, this will allow that collaboration;
this will allow that watershed-based planning,
people talking to each other,
making sure that we are not impacting our neighbors.
There is still going to be flood risk,
but if we prepare well, we hope that we will
have less people in harm's way;
we hope that we'll be planned and prepared in the future.