Eight years before the July 4 flood that killed at least 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic in Kerr County, Texas, local officials considered a familiar question: Should the region invest in a modern warning system for the Guadalupe River?
The answer then, as it had been in years past, was no.
In 2017, following yet another flood along the Guadalupe, a river that cuts through Texas Hill Country and is lined with popular summer camps, Kerr County commissioners debated installing sirens, river gauges and digital alert systems. At the time, they relied on an informal, decades-old tradition: when the waters rose upstream, camp leaders would call or radio those further downriver.
Tom Moser, then a county commissioner, voiced concern that such reliance on word of mouth was inadequate. “We can do all the water-level monitoring we want,” Moser said, “but if we don’t get that information to the public in a timely way, then this whole thing is not worth it.”
Still, the plan went nowhere. A $1 million federal grant that might have funded a more robust system never materialized. Commissioners, working with an annual budget of roughly $67 million, considered the proposal too costly, per the New York Times.
Even as recently as May of this year, local officials discussed a possible partnership with a regional agency that was developing a flood alert system. But there was little urgency, even as the summer season approached.
