I gotta say, I’m not sure who they think will be sympathetic to this.
Leaders of three Kerr County youth camps wrote to Texas House lawmakers Friday opposing legislation that would prohibit the state from licensing camps with cabins in the 100-year floodplain.
Directors at Camp Waldemar, Camp Stewart and Vista Camps wrote that the proposed legislation — which passed the House but awaits approval by the Senate — would cost the camps millions of dollars in rebuilding costs and likely force them to close.
The three camps didn’t report any deaths due to the floods, but they all have structures located in the 100-year floodplain. A Texas Tribune analysis found two-thirds of the structures at Camp Stewart and a third at Camp Waldemar are in the floodplain.
Camp Mystic, where 27 girls and counselors died, has several buildings, including its dining hall and recreation hall, located in a floodway, an area deemed “extremely hazardous” by local officials, Hearst Newspapers found.
State Rep. Donna Howard, an Austin Democrat, introduced the floodplain prohibition amendment to House Bill 1, which requires overnight youth camps to create detailed plans for natural disasters and other emergencies, and establishes civil penalties for noncompliance.
Howard noted that 13 summer camps along the Guadalupe River have structures built on flood-prone land.
“These camps were allowed to operate under old statutes and agreements that have been in place for many decades,” she said. “We cannot continue to allow unsafe building practices to continue.”
There’s a copy of the letter in the story. My Lege roundup post noted the floodplain restriction in HB1, and that it hasn’t passed the Senate yet. SB1, which has passed the Senate but not the House, has the same provision. The Trib provides some more details.
State Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Disaster Preparedness and Flood and the primary author of one of the bills, told the Tribune last week there would be no state assistance for camps to comply with pending legislation if it passes.
“No, camps are private enterprises,” Perry told The Texas Tribune after family members of the 27 Camp Mystic flood victims testified before his committee on Aug. 20. “The state’s not rebuilding private sector camps.”
[…]
Originally, legislators had planned just to require that camps evacuate kids from campgrounds in the floodplain if the weather service issued a flash flood warning and to install ladders on cabins so campers could climb onto rooftops if the situation grew dire and for some reason they hadn’t evacuated. But parents of the kids who died at Camp Mystic pushed to get more restrictive, camp-focused legislation on the table.
“The combination of devastating floods and the heavy financial burden proposed under new state regulations presents an impossible challenge,” the camps’ letter stated. “Collectively, our camps would face millions of dollars in mandated rebuilding costs for cabins subjected to the prohibition that did not sustain damage by recent flooding. These additional burdens would come on top of already significant flood repairs, operational expenses, and existing loans.”
A representative for the Camp Mystic families’ campaign for camp safety said, “We believe the parents’ testimonies and recent media interviews speak for themselves. We have no comment about this letter, but we support lawmakers’ efforts to pass SB1 and HB1 to ensure common sense safety reforms are in place for the 2026 summer camp season.”
I don’t say this often, but I agree with Senator Perry. The letter posted in the Chron story was addressed to Speaker Burrows, but the Trib reported that the letter was originally sent to Dan Patrick, with copies sent to Greg Abbott and legislators. I get why these camps are asking for this restriction to be removed, but I have a hard time believing they will get any kind of positive reaction. There’s a lot more that the state can and should be doing, as noted in my earlier post, and maybe some of that will mitigate the financial hit that these camps will feel. None of that changes the fact that building in high-risk flood areas is a bad idea and should be prevented wherever possible.
No parent should send their children to Camp Waldemar, Camp Stewart or Vista Camps, seeing that they have declared that safety is not first. If your business model is bad, you should go out of business.