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Posted
6 minutes ago, safe sex said:

Whoa whoa whoa, not so fast, my friend. What is this, Soviet Russia?

 

Communist subterfuge disguised as pragmatism.

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Posted

I say that knowing that it’s not a voting monolith there.  It’s just a struggle when they embrace the conservative, low tax low benefit model for their local governance but want or at least accept the socialistic model when they need help.  Although they did turn down the socialist help also, previously, when it was offered by the wrong kind of people. 

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Posted
17 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

I say that knowing that it’s not a voting monolith there.  It’s just a struggle when they embrace the conservative, low tax low benefit model for their local governance but want or at least accept the socialistic model when they need help.  Although they did turn down the socialist help also, previously, when it was offered by the wrong kind of people. 

I get it, and it's frustrating as shit. "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." Bullshit. You shove a hose down his neck and make him, in this instance. It's a regional public safety matter, and the State should take the lead. As it stands now, the patchwork quilt of flooding mitigation has too many holes in it.

Some local governments have stepped up, but Kerr County made a conscious decision not to do so. Don't give them an option to be short-sighted and stingy fuckheads. None of the entities at any level (city, county, state) want any responsibility or accountability in this, which, ironically, makes them all fucking culpable.

State leaders have been warned about it, and planners have been requesting it from all levels of government. Likely, what will happen is that they patch up a couple of holes and call it a day until the next tragedy in 5-10 years, when another Hill Country town gets flooded.

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Posted
1 hour ago, bolverk said:

Penny wise, pound foolish. Also, the Guadalupe County guy knows things are fucked up, but like the typical DTer, he points his finger in the wrong direction.

This is pretty long, so I tried to snip it down to as bite-sized as I could. Link has full article.

Texas lawmakers largely ignored recommendations aimed at helping rural areas like Kerr County prepare for flooding

[A] ProPublica and Texas Tribune analysis of legislative proposals, along with interviews with lawmakers and flood experts, found that the Legislature has repeatedly failed to enact key measures that would help communities prepare for frequent flooding.

Such inaction often hits rural and economically disadvantaged communities hardest because they lack the tax base to fund major flood prevention projects and often cannot afford to produce the data they need to qualify for state and federal grants, environmental experts and lawmakers said.

Over the years, legislators have declined to pass at least three bills that would create siren or alert systems, tools experts say can be especially helpful in rural communities that lack reliable internet and cell service. A 2019 state-commissioned report estimated flood prevention needs at over $30 billion. Since then, lawmakers have allocated just $1.4 billion. And they ignored the key recommendations from the state’s 2024 flood plan that are meant to help rural areas like Kerr County, which is dubbed “Flash Flood Alley” due to its geography.

Spokespeople for Gov. Greg Abbott and House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, did not answer questions about why the plan’s recommendations were overlooked but defended the Legislature’s investment in flood mitigation as significant. They pointed to millions more spent on other prevention efforts, including flood control dam construction and maintenance, regional flood projects, and increased floodplain disclosures and drainage requirements for border counties. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick did not respond to questions.

This week, the Legislature will convene for a special session that Abbott called to address a range of priorities, including flood warning systems, natural disaster preparation and relief funding. Patrick promised that the state would purchase warning sirens for counties in flash flood zones. Similar efforts, however, have previously been rejected by the Legislature. Alongside Burrows, Patrick also announced the formation of committees on disaster preparedness and flooding and called the move “just the beginning of the Legislature looking at every aspect of this tragic event.” Burrows said the House is “ready to better fortify our state against future disasters.”

But Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, a Democrat from Richardson, near Dallas, said state lawmakers have brushed off dire flood prevention needs for decades.

“The manual was there, and we ignored it, and we've continued to ignore these recommendations,” said Rodríguez Ramos, who has served on the House Natural Resources Committee overseeing water issues for three sessions. “It’s performative to say we’re trying to do something knowing well we’re not doing enough.”

One recommendation from the 2024 flood plan would have cost the state nothing to enact. It called for granting counties the authority to levy drainage fees, including in unincorporated areas, that could fund local flood projects. Only about 150 of 1,450 Texas cities and counties have dedicated drainage fees, according to a study cited in the state assessment.

Kerr, a conservative county of 53,000 people, has struggled to gain support for projects that would raise taxes. About a week after the flooding, some residents protested when county commissioners discussed a property tax increase to help cover the costs of recovery efforts.

The inability to raise such fees is one of the biggest impediments for local governments seeking to fund flood mitigation projects, said Robert R. Puente, a Democrat and former state representative who once chaired the state committee responsible for water issues. Lawmakers’ resistance to such efforts is rooted in fiscal conservatism, said Puente, who now heads the San Antonio Water System.

“It’s mostly because of a philosophy that the leadership in Austin has right now, that under no circumstances are we going to raise taxes, and under most circumstances we’re not even going to allow local governments to have control over how they raise taxes or implement fees,” he said.

Another one of the flood plan’s recommendations called for lawmakers to allocate money for a technical assistance program to help underresourced and rural governments better manage flood prone areas, which requires implementing a slew of standards to ensure safe development in those hazardous zones. Doing this work requires local officials to collect accurate mapping that shows the risk of flooding. Passing this measure could have helped counties like Kerr with that kind of data collection, which the plan recognized is especially challenging for rural and economically disadvantaged communities.

Insufficient information impacts Texas’s ability to fully understand flood risks statewide. The water board’s plan, for example, includes roughly 600 infrastructure projects across Texas in need of completion. But its report acknowledged that antiquated or missing data meant another 3,100 assessments would be required to know whether additional projects are needed.

In the Guadalupe River region, which includes Kerr County, 65% of areas lacked adequate flood mapping. Kerrville, the county seat, was listed among the areas identified as having the “greatest known flood risks and mitigation needs.” Yet of the 19 flood needs specific to the city and county, only three were included in the state plan’s list of 600. They included requests to install backup generators in critical facilities and repair low-water crossings, which are shallow points in streets where rainwater can pool to dangerous levels.

At least 16 other priorities, including the county’s desire for an early warning flood system and potential dam or drainage system repairs, required a follow-up evaluation, according to the state plan. County officials tried to obtain grants for the early warning systems for years, to no avail.

Gonzales County, an agriculture-rich area of 20,000 people along the Guadalupe River, is among the rural communities struggling to obtain funding, said emergency management director Jimmy Harless, who is also the county’s fire marshal. The county is in desperate need of a siren system and additional gauges to measure the river’s potentially dangerous flood levels, Harless said, but doesn’t have the resources, personnel or expertise to apply for the “burdensome” state grant process.

“It is extremely frustrating for me to know that there’s money there and there’s people that care, but our state agency has become so bureaucratic that it’s just not feasible for us,” Harless said. “Our folks’ lives are more important than what some bureaucrat wants us to do.”

For years, Texas leaders have focused more on cleaning up after disasters than on preparing for them, said Jim Blackburn, a professor at Rice University specializing in environmental law and flooding issues.

“It’s no secret that the Guadalupe is prone to flash flooding. That’s been known for decades,” Blackburn said. “The state has been very negligent about kind of preparing us for, frankly, the worst storms of the future that we are seeing today because of climate change, and what’s changing is that the risks are just greater today and will be even greater tomorrow, because our storms are getting worse and worse.”

At a news conference this month, Abbott said state committees would investigate “ways to address this,” though he declined to offer specifics. When pressed by a reporter about where the blame for the lack of preparedness should fall, Abbott responded that it was “the word choice of losers.”

Let me succinctly summarize the policy analysis here, and for every single thing the Legislature does.  "Cui bono?" Who benefits?

If the answer is "billionaires, hard-right reactionaries, or evangelical religious fundamentalists," then the legislation will PASS.

If the answer is "the people at large, human beings, including ordinary, non-wealthy people," then the legislation will FAIL.

There's no real profit to be made here, other than awarding a few contracts that aren't even that large to a few big campaign donors.  No profit, then it's bad policy.  That's the Texas way.  Government is only for private enrichment, not for public good.

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Posted
Kerr co commissioners obeyed the calls from their constituents refusing to raise prop tax rates to help with the recovery costs. 

Approaching the point of fuck em out right, top to bottom, yall figure it out without MY tax money. 

They won’t raise taxes to fix their own community.

But they expect a shitload of donations from the rest of us, and for piles of state and federal taxes (paid by the rest of us) to help.

They are approaching point “fuck ‘em” at breakneck speed.
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Posted

So they coulda had an early warning system for about $1M, right? I've been seeing/hearing several heavy military helos every day for a couple of weeks going to and from Ingram, etc. They fly right past my house. 

I wonder how much that has cost so far.

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Posted
20 minutes ago, bluto said:

Kerr co commissioners obeyed the calls from their constituents refusing to raise prop tax rates to help with the recovery costs. 

Approaching the point of fuck em out right, top to bottom, yall figure it out without MY tax money. 

 

7 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:


They won’t raise taxes to fix their own community.

But they expect a shitload of donations from the rest of us, and for piles of state and federal taxes (paid by the rest of us) to help.

They are approaching point “fuck ‘em” at breakneck speed.

 

6 minutes ago, wood said:

So they coulda had an early warning system for about $1M, right? I've been seeing/hearing several heavy military helos every day for a couple of weeks going to and from Ingram, etc. They fly right past my house. 

I wonder how much that has cost so far.

Here’s the shitty thing about living in a fucking society: the insanity of others affects us and/or others, one way or another. In this particular case, Comfort apparently has a flood warning system to protect it, and New Braunfels has the dam at Canyon Lake. Yes, lucky them.

But fucked up shit happening -- due to negligence, slothfulness, spite, or idiocy -- tends to have downstream effects on innocent parties, regardless of whether we’re citizens, taxpayers, or just visiting places with the worst gotdam leadership in the state.

Greater good, social contract, and all that. 

Believe me. I’d prefer to let Kerr County molder at this point, but chickens come home to roost to peck all our eyes out and bingo-shit all over the place. I don’t know what else we do unless we want to just live in a Mad Max world with walls and shit around the sanctuary cities, which wouldn’t be great for commerce, going to away games, or going hiking.

"On the Road Again" would be a very different song.

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, bolverk said:

Here’s the shitty thing about living in a fucking society: the insanity of others affects us and/or others, one way or another. In this particular case, Comfort apparently has a flood warning system to protect it, and New Braunfels has the dam at Canyon Lake. Yes, lucky them.

But fucked up shit happening -- due to negligence, slothfulness, spite, or idiocy -- tends to have downstream effects on innocent parties, regardless of whether we’re citizens, taxpayers, or just visiting places with the worst gotdam leadership in the state.

Greater good, social contract, and all that. 

Believe me. I’d prefer to let Kerr County molder at this point, but chickens come home to roost to peck all our eyes out and bingo-shit all over the place. I don’t know what else we do unless we want to just live in a Mad Max world with walls and shit around the sanctuary cities, which wouldn’t be great for commerce, going to away games, or going hiking.

"On the Road Again" would be a very different song.

I hear ya. I'm not on the "Fuck 'em, don't help 'em at all" train.

I was thinking more in terms of how little an ounce of prevention would have cost vs what that lack of preparation has cost us (just in monetary terms, setting aside the human toll for a moment).

Edited by wood
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Posted
Here’s the shitty thing about living in a fucking society: the insanity of others affects us and/or others, one way or another. In this particular case, Comfort apparently has a flood warning system to protect it, and New Braunfels has the dam at Canyon Lake. Yes, lucky them.
But fucked up shit happening -- due to negligence, slothfulness, spite, or idiocy -- tends to have downstream effects on innocent parties, regardless of whether we’re citizens, taxpayers, or just visiting places with the worst gotdam leadership in the state.
Greater good, social contract, and all that. 
Believe me. I’d prefer to let Kerr County molder at this point, but chickens come home to roost to peck all our eyes out and bingo-shit all over the place. I don’t know what else we do unless we want to just live in a Mad Max world with walls and shit around the sanctuary cities, which wouldn’t be great for commerce, going to away games, or going hiking.
"On the Road Again" would be a very different song.

Dude…that ship has SAILED. Fuck em.
Posted
31 minutes ago, wood said:

I hear ya. I'm not on the "Fucke 'em, don't help 'em at all" train.

I was thinking more in terms of how little an ounce of prevention would have cost vs what that lack of preparation has cost us (just in monetary terms, setting aside the human toll for a moment).

That flood was happening irrespective of any early warnings and the damage it caused was going to happen.  The lives are the thing that could have been altered- unless you mean not having homes, cabinet and rv parks anywhere close to the river. 

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Posted (edited)
28 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

That flood was happening irrespective of any early warnings and the damage it caused was going to happen.  The lives are the thing that could have been altered- unless you mean not having homes, cabinet and rv parks anywhere close to the river. 

True enough. So that leaves us with the question of whether or not saving $1M/accepting Obama's dirty covid vaxxer $ was worth all those lives lost. 

ETA: That said, for some reason I was under the impression that those helos were making all those flights in support of the recovery effort. If it's not that, then what kind of assistance are they giving to the cleanup? Serious question. Anyone?

Edited by wood
Posted
2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:


Dude…that ship has SAILED. Fuck em.

Yeah, I know. Just realize that where I live now is 80/20 Trump country. From my backyard, which sits on a steep ridge, there’s a creek that’s less than two football fields away from a creek that feeds directly into the Colorado River, and eventually the Highland Lakes. Stuff gets filtered, ends up in Spence, Ivie, Buchanan, and then on down the line. 

Fortunately, for me, I'm now on a well now, drinking ancient dinosaur piss. Unfortunately, you and the rest of Austin aren't so lucky. Enjoy.

What we choose to do directly affects others. Refusing to force them to take care of their own shit will eventually fuck you over, too. You know this, and I know you know this, and I'm as embittered by everything as much as you are, but I don't know what else to say at this point in terms of flood mitigation and/or water quality. A regional authority of some sort should be the answer.

Look, my stating obvious answers to hydrological conundrums isn't going to solve shit. I know that -- I'm not naive. I'm just giving voice to obvious fucking answers that shouldn't require a degree for such a simple gotdam response.

Mystic? You fucked up. Children in your care died.

Kerrville/Kerr County? You fucked up, too. Both children and daytrippers died.

Texas? Yeah, treat flood stuff like you did 100 years ago when state highways -- along with FM and RR roads -- became a priority because those corrupt early-20th-century knobs who implemented such a far-reaching system were more sophisticated than current state leadership is today. Hell, who gave LCRA the authority to budget its waters?

It's all so gotdam obvious. But, without state leadership, nothing is going to get done. This state needs an LBJ-type guy to throw his considerable swinging dick weight around for these numbskulls to even consider thinking more than one step beyond what grandma is cooking for Sunday lunch.

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Posted
1 hour ago, wood said:

So they coulda had an early warning system for about $1M, right? I've been seeing/hearing several heavy military helos every day for a couple of weeks going to and from Ingram, etc. They fly right past my house. 

I wonder how much that has cost so far.

Wake me up when they're gunships hosing MAGAs.

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Posted (edited)
9 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

Wake me up when they're gunships hosing MAGAs.

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They way things are going, and given my surly & s/m posting history, I won't be surprised if they pop open a door and start strafing my house.

Edited by wood
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Posted

Saw this today:

"it's nobody's fault. And if I did have a little girl, I would still send her to Mystic in a minute. Dick Eastland died trying to save the campers he loved. And there's no other place on earth I would want my little girl to be. Where she was loved so much somebody else died trying to save her." 

image.thumb.png.5b0df5f10a09cbfb894784a0925b00b3.png

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Posted
10 hours ago, wood said:

So they coulda had an early warning system for about $1M, right? I've been seeing/hearing several heavy military helos every day for a couple of weeks going to and from Ingram, etc. They fly right past my house. 

I wonder how much that has cost so far.

Estimates are $2-4K per hour for a Blackhawk.  A Shithook is about $11k per hour.

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Posted

On a side note, was curious about one of the places we like near Camp Wood.  Looks like the cabins are just outside of the 100 year flood plain (which honestly does not mean much these days) as you can see below:

image.thumb.png.f3c3d5128eee0a14dd481102ed8dd9a3.png

But what I found interesting is twofold:

1) Data / flood maps that look incredibly outdated

2) Entire sections where there is no digital data available.  See the actual town of Camp Wood:

image.thumb.png.b3195439c8402289b4246aa58e4631d7.png

Posted (edited)

There's a whole lot of nothing out there.  Need is usually what drives updating maps.  The bbq sandwich place in Camp Wood is real good though.

Edited by kevwun
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Posted
27 minutes ago, kevwun said:

There's a whole lot of nothing out there.  Need is usually what drives updating maps.  The bbq sandwich place in Camp Wood is real good though.

Which one.  Last time we stayed there, the only thing open midweek was King's Texas Smokehouse.  Looks like it is now closed.  Not many food options in that dot on a map.

Posted
3 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Estimates are $2-4K per hour for a Blackhawk.  A Shithook is about $11k per hour.

Thanks. It's always 2 blackhawks, at least twice a day each way.

Posted
3 hours ago, kevwun said:

It was King's.  Last time I was there was probably 2 years ago.  That's a shame.

Yeah, that's a big hole for that town.  Little store, great BBQ.  That sucks.  

Would love to go back and rent a cabin in Camp Wood.  Definitely can't visit there without bringing a buttload of supplies.  

Posted

we need to stop talking about that area of the hill country lest people who don't already know about it learn about a park with trees in it that's a sacred site for 72 hours every 2nd or 3rd year

nothing to see here

move along

move along

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Posted

 https://archive.is/2cigI  or https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/guadalupe-river-authority-property-taxes-upgrades-20766494.php

image.thumb.png.48dede7287e67b180141c558a2a773ef.png

Quote

 

In 1988, a year after a devastating flood killed 10 teenagers trying to evacuate from a riverside summer camp in Kerr County, leaders at the local river authority made a difficult decision: They raised their tax rate by nearly 50% to help pay for an early flood warning system. 

The rate hike was controversial at the time. But the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, which levies property taxes in order to manage the river that flows through Kerr County, decided it was worth the political fallout. 

“If it saves one life down the road, it will be worth it,” Dick Eastland, who was a member of UGRA’s board of directors and also ran the riverside Camp Mystic, told the Associated Press that summer. 

The river authority initially spent $225,000, about half a million in today’s dollars, on what was then described as a “world-class” warning system. Local officials said it was a crucial way to save motorists from being swept away on low-lying roadways, which is what had happened to the teen campers. 

Yet nearly three decades later, when an engineering study determined that the system needed a $1 million upgrade, a tax increase was not on the table. 

That didn’t change in subsequent years, even as local officials failed to secure significant funds from federal and state officials. It held true even after UGRA built up a $3.4 million reserve fund for an unrelated project that later fell through, leaving the river authority with so much extra money that it lowered taxes. 

And so the region was left without a modern flood warning system on July 4... (rest at link, long article)

 

 

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Posted
12 hours ago, TreatyOak said:

Saw this today:

"it's nobody's fault. And if I did have a little girl, I would still send her to Mystic in a minute. Dick Eastland died trying to save the campers he loved. And there's no other place on earth I would want my little girl to be. Where she was loved so much somebody else died trying to save her." 

image.thumb.png.5b0df5f10a09cbfb894784a0925b00b3.png

Stupid cunt. 

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Posted

“If I had a little girl” 

not everybody has the luxury of only having to imagine losing a child because of this horrific incident where it is evident fuck all was done to prevent it

Even the parents of children who survived or parents having to explain to their children that maybe some of their friends/relatives are dead because of the flood.

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Posted (edited)
9 hours ago, bluto said:

Fucking rubes…. Common clay of the new west. Fuck em

This thought seems so quaint today:

“The flood alert system is one governmental project that has proved necessary and beneficial to the people who pay for it,” the Kerrville Daily Times wrote in a 1991 editorial. “Whether that tax increase was necessary or whether funds could have been found elsewhere is merely an arguing point for curmudgeons.”

In the following few years, the quality of governance in Texas would suffer a severe slide downhill. I'd pin it on the q-nut conspiracists but that's probably too simplistic. 

What Dick Eastland said in 1988 in advocating for a flood warning system, “If it saves one life down the road, it will be worth it,” makes me think about what he did/didn't do on the night of the floods, question why there wasn't decisive action, think about his decisions to get his property out of the FEMA flood zone, leave several of his cabins in the most precarious of positions while building new structures uphill, and wonder about the story his phone records on that night may or may not tell.

Edited by Chopper
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Posted

the chronicle editorial board article is exonerative

it covers facts that blame no one or assign responsibility

not discussed at all: maga decisions to decline free money to save lives because the money was communist, marxist, leninist, muslim. atheist, vaccinated and masked

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Posted
48 minutes ago, Chopper said:

What Dick Eastland said in 1988 in advocating for a flood warning system makes me think about what he did/didn't do on the night of the floods, question why there wasn't decisive action, think about his decisions to get his property out of the FEMA flood zone, leave several of his cabins in the most precarious of positions while building new structures uphill, and wonder about the story his phone records on that night may or may not tell.

His narrative is definitely different from the MAGA morons in Kerrville city government. He falls more under the greed, hubris and complacency bucket. May the lawsuits forever expose his failures so we can stop with this insane, "he was a heroe"* Facebook narrative.

*Typical spelling I see 😡 

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Posted
53 minutes ago, Hagbard Celine said:

the chronicle editorial board article is exonerative

it covers facts that blame no one or assign responsibility

not discussed at all: maga decisions to decline free money to save lives because the money was communist, marxist, leninist, muslim. atheist, vaccinated and masked

Highlights the difference between conservatives in 1988 and today.

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Posted

I'm not sure that saving pennies and spending thousands because of idealism is the best strategy. But what do I know I'm not a Kerr County Commissioner. 

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