A Kerrville-area river authority executed a contract last month for a flood warning system that would have been used to help with emergency response, local government officials said in response to a request by ABC News.
“An initial kickoff meeting was scheduled for mid-July,” an unidentified spokesperson for the area’s Joint Information Center wrote.
But the floodwaters of the Guadalupe River didn’t wait for Kerr County’s technology to catch up.
Now, with at least 118 flood-related fatalities reported in Central Texas this week, a review of minutes of local government meetings shows that some county commissioners, sheriffs and other leaders have urged improved flood warning systems in the area for decades.
As ABC News first reported, during a meeting on April 17 of this year, the Upper Guadalupe River Authority’s Board of Directors unanimously voted to select a company known as Kisters “as the firm to develop a Flood Warning System in Kerr County.”
Meeting minutes show the company was slated to receive a contract worth up to nearly $73,000 as part of the proposed system.
The contract was for “a centralized dashboard to support local flood monitoring and emergency response,” which would allow emergency managers to view real-time streamflow and rainfall data all on one platform, according to local officials.
The system would not issue public alerts, the officials noted, but would instead serve as “a decision-support resource intended to complement existing infrastructure.”
Kisters did not respond to multiple requests for comment from ABC News.
The spokesperson for the Joint Information Center told ABC News, “in light of recent events the timeline [of the new system] will be reevaluated.”
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