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