AUSTIN (The Hill) — Texas leaders’ dreams of unlimited development and a rush of AI data centers are on a collision course with a new reality of extreme weather, as this month’s flash floods hammer a landscape plagued by long-term drought.
Heading into the summer, the region faced perhaps its worst drought on record, until the dregs of Tropical Storm Barry poured torrential rain over Central Texas.
With Texans now facing both the aftermath of floods and a referendum that could release billions into new state water supplies and flood control projects, experts told The Hill, the state faces a critical question: Can it make the necessary investments in time to keep the economic miracle growing — and can it do so without either getting washed away or sucking the environment dry?
When it rains, it pours
The July 4 deluge funneled through limestone canyons, swelling rivers that tore through the Hill Country west of Austin and San Antonio and killing at least 132, with more than 100 others still missing — a death toll that makes the floods among Texas’s deadliest weather disasters of the last century…