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LAWMAKERS LEFT GAP IN FLOOD WARNING SYSTEM  
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Freddy Brewster, Lucy Dean Stockton
July 7, 2025
The Lever
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_ Before the Texas disaster, Congress and successive presidents
ignored demands to fully fund a nationwide system monitoring rivers
for signs of flash floods. _

A Sheriff’s deputy combs through the banks of the Guadalupe River
in Hunt, Texas, on July 5, 2025, after a flash flood swept through the
area. , AP Photo/Julio Cortez

 

Despite the rising threat of climate disasters
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like last week’s deadly flash flood in Texas, the vast majority of
America’s waterways are still not being monitored by water level
gauges that help identify impending disasters. Lawmakers have long
declined to fully fund the federal government’s program supporting a
nationwide flood warning system, according to government documents
reviewed by _The Lever_. 

While demanding billions of dollars of new tax cuts in the months
before the Texas disaster, President Donald Trump’s administration
proposed to nearly halve the budget of the federal agency overseeing a
federal flood warning network — and proposed a 22 percent cut to the
specific budget line funding that system. During Trump’s first term,
the number of water level gauges declined for the first time since
Congress upgraded the program nearly 20 years ago.

As a result, 99 percent
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of America’s waterways are not currently monitored by such systems.
In all, more than 1,300 sites deemed
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a federal priority to “provide critical data for flood warnings”
do not have the gauges “because of funding limitations,” according
to a 2024 report
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from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), which oversees
federal funding
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for the gauges. 

Dozens of these devices, called streamgages, have been discontinued
nationwide in the past four years, experts wrote
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to lawmakers in February. According to federal data, hundreds more
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of the meters, which continuously measure and report water levels, are
in jeopardy of going offline without more funding to manage these
instruments. 

The Interstate Council on Water Policy, a water resource management
group, has been urging Congress since at least 2014
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to increase funding for the Federal Priority Streamgage program
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a consortium of federal water monitoring stations that track water
levels nationwide. These groups are asking for just $33 million in
funding for the federal program. 

“Our organizations rely heavily upon the information provided by
these streamgages to make critical decisions about public safety,
respond to extreme weather events, forecast and maintain water
supplies, and support the nation’s economy,” a coalition of civil
engineering, water management, and water safety organizations wrote
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to lawmakers months before the Texas flood. “Any further funding
shortfalls will greatly impact our ability to protect public safety,
support infrastructure and plan for and respond to extreme weather
events.”

MORE DISASTERS, FEWER GAUGES

In 2009, Congress passed the SECURE Water Act to vastly expand the
streamgage network. But after an initial infusion of funding to begin
covering 4,700 locations, the funding plateaued during Trump’s first
term, and the number of sites funded by the federal government
declined for the first time since the legislation was enacted,
according to data compiled by the Congressional Research Service
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Number of USGS Streamgages and Policy Changes over Time (Image credit:
CRS [[link removed]])

During Trump’s first term, the program funding did not meet the
SECURE Water Act’s mandate for an entirely federally funded suite of
at least 4,700 streamgage sites. 

“Funding decreased when accounting for inflation,” reported
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Congressional Research Service, which warned lawmakers that with costs
increasing by up to 3 percent a year, the funding “may not be
sufficient to maintain the current operations” of the system and
could lead agencies “to discontinue some [Federal Priority
Streamgage program] streamgages.”

The same report warned that the “USGS estimates that $130 million in
additional funding for capital costs would be needed to complete and
harden the network (of gages); however, an average of only about $25
million was appropriated annually for (the network) between FY2014 and
FY2021, resulting in no expansion of the network to complete the
designated network.”

The needed funds for this program are a part of $3.7 trillion in
additional funding needed to address the country’s ailing
infrastructure
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said Tom Smith, executive director of the American Society of Civil
Engineers. 

“We’re seeing more and more extreme weather events, whether it’s
wind or tornado or snow loads or rain or tsunami or floods, we are
seeing more extreme conditions that we need to be prepared for,”
Smith told _The Lever_. “And so the more data that we have, the
better decisions we can make in anticipating future conditions.”

The Congressional Research Service reached a similar conclusion in a
2021 report [[link removed]], stating that
“without adequate information, some observers contend that engineers
may overdesign structures, resulting in greater costs, or may not make
proper allowances for floods, compromising public safety.”

As the country struggles to provide real-time information to residents
in flood-prone areas, in recent months, the Trump administration
gutted restrictions
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on building in flood zones and fired hundreds of staffers
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at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the agency tasked with
providing funds and emergency response during disasters. The president
also gutted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
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a federal agency tasked with weather forecasting and which oversees
the National Weather Service. More than 1,000 staffers
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were either fired or left the agency since the beginning of this year,
resulting in a 20 percent reduction in staff. 

HIGH AND DRY

States and municipalities like Kerr County, Texas — a flood-prone
area known as Flash Flood Alley
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— have scrambled to fund existing streamgages and install new ones
as federal funding for such projects has remained stagnant in past
decades.

Local officials in Kerr County considered implementing stream
monitoring devices and warning sirens after floods in 2015 and 2017.
However, county officials voted
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against installing such devices, citing high costs with one official
stating
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that the system would be “a little extravagant for Kerr County, with
sirens and such.”

Over the Fourth of July weekend, floods swept through the area,
killing more than 100 people
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including more than two dozen children
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at a summer camp. Three
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monitoring
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sites
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on small tributaries upstream of the flooded area showed water level
spikes before flood waters hit
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But local warning systems weren’t enough, and local officials used a
word-of-mouth system with residents upstream calling downstream
residents, warning of potential flooding, _The_ _New York Times_
reported
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Texas currently has at least six streamgages currently endangered
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discontinued as funding for their operation remains uncertain
— despite the state’s commitment to its flood infrastructure
program. 

Hundreds of other streamgages around the country are facing similar
risks while 17 streamgages
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were discontinued in 2024 alone, thanks to budget shortfalls,
according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Groundwater and
Streamflow Information Program [[link removed]]. Near
Asheville, N.C., which was ravaged by flooding from Hurricane Helene
in September 2024, four gauges
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risk of losing their funding. Fourteen gauges across flood-prone areas
of Florida are also currently at risk of going offline
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According to experts, discontinuing streamgages not only hinders
emergency response networks, but also prevents the collection of
irreplaceable long-term data that scientists use to track water
resources and to prevent future crises. This information is integral
to the construction of critical infrastructure like bridges, water
treatment plants, and hydroelectric dams. 

These devices are “super critical for lifesaving alerts for river
flooding specifically,” said Julie Arbit, a research specialist for
the Center for Social Solutions at the University of Michigan. Arbit
added that these types of devices aren’t intended to monitor smaller
tributaries that are more prone to flash floods, but the technology is
evolving.

“Monitoring tributaries would also help predictions for the larger
rivers,” Arbit told _The Lever_. “There are 90,000+ small
tributary basins in the U.S., so it’s a complex problem. Less
complex when you only consider regions we know have flash flooding.”

However, less than 1 percent of waterways are currently monitored by
streamgages, according to the USGS. A single sensor can cost more than
$25,000 [[link removed]] and requires
continual operational expenses, like routine calibration to account
for changing streambeds and shifting flow patterns, often in remote
and challenging environments, to maintain accurate readings. Nearly 70
percent of that cost may fall on communities
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particular burden on small and urban watersheds prone to flash floods
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Scientists have warned for years that faster, widespread, and more
intense flooding [[link removed]]
are growing increasingly common as the climate changes, affecting not
just coastal areas but riverine locations as well, and the government
has acknowledged
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that these risks threaten communities across the United States. 

But Congress has been dragging its feet on building out a
federally-funded “backbone” network of streamflow gauges across
the U.S., as part of a plan that was originally mandated by lawmakers
in 1999. 

A 2022 assessment
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of the Federal Priority Streamgage program found that the partial
funding, largely cobbled together between direct appropriations to the
Federal Priority Streamgage program via the USGS and the Cooperative
Matching Funds program, covers just 1,430 gages out of 4,758 eligible
streamflow-gage locations [[link removed]],
roughly a third of all locations, and doesn’t offer more funding to
build new monitoring stations. 

In the aftermath of the Texas flood, a Kerr County official told
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_The_ _New York Times_ that flood warning systems are cost prohibitive
for small communities — which is a problem that the Federal Priority
Streamgage program was designed to combat. In the 1990s, the federal
government split 50 percent of the cost to implement streamgages with
local municipalities, but because of inflation by 2020 localities were
responsible for nearly 70 percent of the costs, according to a 2021
report [[link removed]] from the
Congressional Research Service.

“The lack of federal funding for sites increasingly places the
burden on state, regional and local entities to assume the costs for
maintenance and operation,” said Beth Callaway, executive director
of the Interstate Council on Water Policy, a water resource management
group. “As more states and local communities find it increasingly
difficult to make up for the gap… we are seeing an increased rate of
loss of sites and long-term data that cannot be re-created.”

Last year, the Federal Priority Streamgage program was reauthorized to
maintain its current funding of $26 million through 2028. A coalition
of 105 water management experts claimed in a Feb. 27 letter
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that this amount is already inadequate, instead calling for $7.3
million more to “halt funding shortfalls that are leading to the
elimination of critical streamgages.” 

Experts claim that states and local communities find it increasingly
difficult to make up for the operational gap in funding streamgage
costs due to their own local economic pressures, and inflation. But
instead of budget increases, the Federal Priority Streamgage program
could soon face further cuts. 

Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget allocates $891.6 million
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to the USGS, about 39 percent less than the 2025 annual appropriations
of $1.450 billion. The budget
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furthermore “eliminates programs that provide grants to
universities, duplicate other Federal research programs and focus on
social agendas (e.g., climate change).” 

The budget instead directs the USGS to “focus on achieving dominance
in energy and critical minerals” as well as supporting “artificial
intelligence and machine-learning approaches for USGS’s water models
and assessments.” 

The administration’s budget proposes a 22 percent cut
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to the USGS’s water resources programs, which funds the Groundwater
and Streamflow Information Program, which oversees the streamgage
program
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The proposal does not detail how the White House wants that cut
implemented across specific programs — but the administration
asserts
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that despite the cuts, it “maintains support for USGS
streamgages.” 

Trump’s General Services Administration, an agency tasked with
managing federal property, has also proposed the closure
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of regional USGS offices across the country, which experts say will
complicate
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technicians’ efforts to visit streamgage sites in remote locations,
house sensitive equipment, or maintain research materials.

The cuts come as funding for the streamgage network has remained
stagnant for more than five years, Callaway said.

“Full implementation of the network is estimated at $130 million and
it has never been funded at that level,” Callaway told _The Lever_.
“Funding shortfalls mean that sites are increasingly at risk of
being discontinued. That spells a loss of important information that
is used to protect life, property, and reduce risk. The functions that
streamgages provide are not academic luxuries; they are foundational
tools for protecting life, property, drinking water, agriculture, and
biodiversity.”

Each day, The Lever ’s staff tirelessly investigates, researches,
writes, fact-checks, and edits stories that hold the powerful
accountable in ways corporate media will not. All of that work is
supported by readers who become paid supporters.
If you are able, please click here now
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