The sound of construction machinery filled the air as Kylie Nidever walked past properties ravaged months earlier by floodwaters.

Nidever’s home was among those in her Bumble Bee Hills neighborhood untouched by last year’s July 4 flood, one of the deadliest disasters in Texas history. The 35-year-old understood the draw of the tranquil Kerr County subdivision, where she played as a child in a nearby creek that fed the Guadalupe River. But she was taken aback by how enthusiastic most of her neighbors were to rebuild.

Nidever wondered why the government had let people build in any areas long known to be dangerous and whether leaders would intervene now.

“Is somebody going to come in and stop us?” said Nidever, who has considered moving. “If it happens again and it’s worse next time, people will die in this neighborhood.”

After last summer’s disaster, some Texas legislators scolded local officials for their decision not to invest in flood warning sirens and for the chaotic emergency response. Other elected leaders excused the storm as so massive that no one could have prepared for it.

But lawmakers failed to address the underlying problem: They have repeatedly rejected bills that could protect residents in the state’s most dangerous, flood-prone areas, an investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found.

The majority of the 137 people confirmed to have died across five counties in the July 4 tragedy were staying in places identified by the federal government as being at risk for flooding, the newsrooms found. These were places where state lawmakers had a chance to curb development, but didn’t.

The newsrooms reviewed nearly 60 years of legislation and identified over five dozen flood safety bills rejected by lawmakers.

The most consequential measures, experts said, could have saved lives by stopping construction in the areas at greatest risk for flooding, including where people later died on July 4.

“Had the state enacted any of that legislation, we might not have had the excruciating loss,” Char Miller, a Texas environmental historian who now teaches at Pomona College in California, said after learning of the newsrooms’ findings. “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.”

Lawmakers also didn’t pass measures that would have forced buildings in flood-prone areas to be elevated; blocked certain types of structures, such as solid waste facilities, from being built close to bodies of water; or granted local leaders additional authority to curb potentially unsafe development.

Texas has more buildings in flood-prone areas — at least 650,000 structures — than any other state besides Florida, according to a ProPublica and Tribune analysis of Federal Emergency Management Agency data. The analysis shows that only eight other states have a higher share of structures in flood-prone spots than Texas.

More people have died from floods in Texas, and more national flood insurance claims have been paid out here since 1980, than in nearly any state with the exception of Florida and Louisiana. Yet Texas trails at least 29 other states, including Florida, that have passed development standards that force structures to be built higher in flood-prone areas, according to a 2020 FEMA report.

“We need to resist this narrative that this disaster was unpreventable,” said Michael Slattery, director of the Institute for Environmental Studies at Texas Christian University. “The disaster is just shaped by policy choices made over what I thought were just years.” Instead, Slattery said, it was decades.

The need for stronger flood protections only grows more urgent, scientists say, as climate change makes heavy storms previously considered once in a lifetime more likely.

After this latest catastrophe, Gov. Greg Abbott called Texas politicians back for two special legislative sessions and tasked them with addressing aspects of the disaster. The only buildings legislators banned from flood-prone areas were youth camps, and only after intense lobbying by the grieving parents of 25 children and two counselors who died on July 4 at Camp Mystic. (Its executive director also died.)

Some Texas lawmakers over the years have pointed to protecting landowners’ rights to evaluate their own property risk as a reason not to pass additional regulations. At a hearing more than a month after the flood, Republican Rep. Wes Virdell, who represents Kerr County, said rural areas “enjoy the freedom to take our risk and build as we would like to.”

None of the top state leaders — Abbott, Lt. Gov Dan Patrick or House Speaker Dustin Burrows — responded to the newsrooms’ questions about whether legislators should enact stricter statewide building rules. Abbott’s office said he has addressed flooding issues by funding mitigation projects to lessen the storms’ impact.

Burrows’ office declined multiple interview requests, and Patrick’s office didn’t answer the newsrooms’ emails.

Without major changes, the same federal, state and local rules that permitted residents to construct their homes so close to the Guadalupe River in the first place are allowing many to build there again.

That includes 82-year-old Joan Connor and her husband, David Stearns, who live near Nidever in Bumble Bee Hills.

The couple had recently returned from an RV trip when last summer’s flood hit.

Water rose to Connor’s chest as she hollered to her 98-year-old husband. They........

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