KERR COUNTY - Officials in Kerr County are moving forward with plans to add dozens more warning sirens and new rain and stream gauges to improve flood warnings on the upper Guadalupe River - but doing so is likely to cost millions of dollars.
About 30 more sirens are expected to be installed along the river, officials said this week, to comply with state legislation requiring sirens in areas designated as high-risk.
But exactly who will foot the bill for that is still to be determined.
The state created a grant program and provided an initial $1.25 million for counties, including Kerr, for the effort. But for months, local officials have said it will cost far more to fully implement the mandates.
They now estimate the remaining sirens will cost more than $3 million, with additional improvements, including more gauges to improve data and prediction, driving the total even higher.
The Upper Guadalupe River Authority's proposed budget for the next fiscal year calls for $5.4 million total in spending on sirens and gauges in the county, but that's contingent on grant funding from the Texas Water Development Board, General Manager Tara Bushnoe told the authority's board this week.
That amount is a "planning-level estimate" for a system that complies with the new state rules, she said.
The river authority does have some reserve funds available for the projects, but its board voted this week not to raise its tax rate for the coming year. The proposed rate would still generate slightly more revenue than last year - about $1,019,000, up from $955,000 - but they opted against pursuing a higher rate, with a majority saying they could use reserves if needed and hold off on an increase until they know more about what state funding is available in the future.
Kerr County commissioners also voted this week not to pursue a disaster-related tax hike, and to instead hold a vote next month on the rate that generates the same amount of revenue as last year.
Last spring, the river authority purchased eight sirens for the first phase of the county's new flood warning system.
Six of the sirens have been installed, all west of Ingram and all on or near summer camp sites. Those properties were prioritized because they have a high concentration of people and because the watershed there floods more quickly than areas downstream.
The seventh siren will be installed next to Ingram Independent School District's new administration building on Texas 39, and an eighth will go on the North Fork of the Guadalupe, Bushnoe said. An easement agreement is being finalized for that last siren. When it's complete, the river authority will schedule installation for both sirens, Bushnoe said.
The sirens are intended to be heard outdoors within about a 2 mile radius at a level of 70 decibels, though exactly how far the sound travels can vary depending on topography, vegetation and other factors. They can all be activated from a base station or remotely, and to comply with state regulations, must have two forms of power and two forms of communication for redundancy.
While the Upper Guadalupe River Authority led the purchase and installation process for the first set of sirens, responsibility for activating them in an emergency lies with Kerr County's emergency management coordinator - and under a recently approved agreement, the county will also take over responsibility for maintenance and operation of the sirens.
County commissioners voted this month to approve an interlocal agreement outlining each entity's roles in the flood warning system. Under the contract, which the river authority's board also approved Wednesday, the county will own and maintain all sirens and related equipment and will be "solely responsible for emergency responses in the event of future flood events in Kerr County."
The river authority will own and maintain any new rain and water level gauges. It will also remain responsible for RiverHub, the dashboard it created this year to collect data from existing gauges and weather sources to provide better information for flood warnings.
"We're each really working in our areas of expertise in the future and coordinating efforts," Bushnoe said.
That network of gauges in Kerr County is expected to expand substantially, and to ultimately be used to improve not just flood warnings but flood prediction and early detection.
The Upper Guadalupe River Authority's board approved a $461,000 agreement with WEST Consultants to start work on that expansion.
The agreement includes identifying locations for new equipment, getting permission from landowners where access is needed and overseeing installation. It calls for site visits for up to 22 stream gauge locations and up to 24 rain gauge locations.
Locations will be chosen to "support outdoor warning siren activation and to collect the data feeding the predictive flood models used to trigger sirens," according to river authority documents.
The agreement also calls for planning for long-term outreach and education about the warning system, "so people served by the sirens understand the flood warning system's purpose and what to do if a siren activates." It calls for focusing on community organizations, camps and private recreational facilities, and visitors.
Data from those gauges will be integrated into a planned modeling system that helps identify potential flooding and inundation based on rainfall and radar. The river authority will hire another contractor for that part of the project, Bushnoe said.
The agency's proposed budget calls for spending $1.7 million on gauges - though that's also contingent on landing the money.
State legislators last summer also allocated funding to researchers at Texas Tech University, the University of Texas at Arlington and Rice University, all tasked with projects to improve forecasting, weather data collection and flood warning in the Hill Country.
The river authority and its consultants are coordinating with those teams, Bushnoe said.
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This article originally published at Kerr County to add 30 sirens, new gauges to flood warning system.