Hutto looks at ways to reduce risks
HUTTO — Williamson County has updated its flood plain maps, and that spells bad news for hundreds of local property owners, the City Council recently heard.
However, a consulting firm hired by the city has identified more than a dozen ways to reduce the risk of flooding at a potential cost of $149 million, council members also learned during an April 3 session.
No matter what, more affected homes and businesses will still need to buy flood plain insurance once the Federal Emergency Management Agency completes its own updates in addition to what the county has already done, officials said.
The new maps will become effective in late 2026.
“The count of homes that were in the 100-year floodplain previously was around 70. It’s now over 700, so that’s a tenfold increase,” said Andy Rooke, senior engineer with K Friese + Associates engineering consulting firm.
The proposed floodcontrol projects included remediation, recommendations to improve drainage and how to protect property from flooding.
Council authorized adding KFA’s research to the city’s drainage master plan. Meanwhile, the municipality will investigate ways to secure funding through a mix of state and federal grants, storm water utility fees and general fund resources.
Meanwhile, property owners may have to dig deeper into their wallets to offset the risk of flooding.
“A lot of these homes are not currently in the flood plain but when the new (FEMA) maps become real, those homes are going to get added to the flood plains, which means those homeowners are now going to be told, ‘You have to go buy flood insurance,’” said City Engineer Matt Rector. “A lot of them were designed to be out of the flood plain but now they’re going to get added in because of the new rainfall data.”
KFA was hired by the city in October 2023 to address the drainage problems as part of the drainage master plan.
The company used the updated preliminary maps posted by the county in 2024, which found 741 at-risk structures within city limits, and about 1,300 more in Hutto’s extraterritorial jurisdiction.
Rooke identified 13 projects that would provide high-flood damage reduction and low implementation impact. The projects were chosen after KFA received input from city staff and weighed the potential for removing structures from the flood zones.
“We went in and took a look at what sort of benefits would there be, how many structures could be removed from the flood plain with a potential project, so we could do a sort of apples-to-apples comparison between the projects,” said Rooke regarding how the 13 were chosen from among 25 initial potential projects.
KFA’s study focused on three key flood-prone areas: Old Town Hutto, Cottonwood Creek and the west side of FM 1660 South.
The proposed projects also included two preemptive concepts: installing flood- monitoring gauges at detention ponds and adding a new citywide earlywarning system to alert residents and first responders to the potential for flooding during weather events. A detention pond remains dry until a storm occurs; a retention pond has a constant pool of water.
“Neither of these two actually remove any structures from the flood plain but they do affect flood risk as they can help get people out of harm’s way,” Rooke said.
KFA suggested the city adopt the county’s flood-plain maps as the local regulatory flood hazard reference for community development and planning activities until the maps formally have been adopted by FEMA.
This potentially will prevent additional new development in areas FEMA will officially designate as at risk for flooding next year.
“The flood risk is there now. Nature doesn’t care if you’ve got a map in place or not,” Rooke said. “We think these projects should be implemented as soon as you have funding available that would fit into the city prioritization plan.”
