Texas lawmakers banned youth camps from flood-prone areas but rejected broader flood-protection legislation during two special sessions called by Gov. Greg Abbott after the July 4 floods that killed 137 people across five counties. The sessions tasked legislators with addressing aspects of the disaster, but resulted in a single development restriction targeted at children's camps.

Three bills considered would have banned youth camps or nearly all development in areas most at risk of dangerous flooding. Legislators advanced only the camp restriction, passed after lobbying by the grieving parents of 25 campers and two counselors who died at Camp Mystic. The camp's executive director also died in the flooding.

The majority of the 137 people confirmed dead were staying in places identified by the federal government as being at risk for flooding. A review of nearly 60 years of legislation identified more than five dozen flood safety bills rejected by Texas lawmakers. Texas has at least 650,000 structures in flood-prone areas, more than any state besides Florida, according to an analysis of FEMA data. Since 1980, more people have died from floods in Texas, and more national flood insurance claims have been paid out there, than in nearly any state except Florida and Louisiana. At least 29 other states, including Florida, have passed development standards requiring structures to be built higher in flood-prone areas, according to a 2020 FEMA report.

At a hearing more than a month after the flood, Republican Rep. Wes Virdell, who represents Kerr County, defended the approach. "Rural areas enjoy the freedom to take our risk and build as we would like to," Virdell said. Some Texas legislators scolded local officials for not investing in flood warning sirens and for the chaotic emergency response, while other elected leaders excused the storm as so massive that no one could have prepared for it.

Char Miller, a Texas environmental historian and professor at Pomona College, said the rejected measures could have changed the outcome. "Had the state enacted any of that legislation, we might not have had the excruciating loss. The continued inability of the state to pass legislation to protect its citizens means it's not doing the one thing it's supposed to do, which is defend the health and safety of those who call Texas home," Miller said.

Michael Slattery, director of the Institute for Environmental Studies at Texas Christian University, pushed back on framings of the flood as inevitable. "We need to resist this narrative that this disaster was unpreventable. The disaster is just shaped by policy choices made over what I thought were just years," Slattery said.

Without major changes, the same federal, state and local rules that permitted residents to construct homes close to the Guadalupe River are allowing many to build there again. Scientists say the need for stronger flood protections grows more urgent as climate change makes heavy storms previously considered once in a lifetime more likely.