Will ‘Gray’ or ‘Green’ Flood Infrastructure Protect Houston?

HOUSTON— With the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season under way as of June 1, Texas has taken a major step toward improving its flood defenses by passing a bill to tap into the state’s savings—the aptly nicknamed Rainy Day Fund—for a sum of $1.7 billion. The move comes almost two years after Hurricane Harvey deluged Texas in August 2017, killing 68 people and causing an estimated $125 billion in damage statewide.

Texas lawmakers passed Senate Bill 7 in late May, and it now awaits the signature of the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott. For municipal governments around the state, small and large, the bill’s passage means an influx of money through grants and loans that will unlock cost-sharing federal dollars for as-yet-unspecified resilience schemes.