A ticking time bomb lies at the bottom of the Llano River, near a small town called Junction. In 2018, major flooding across the watershed overwhelmed the region’s water infrastructure as high waters brought with them silt, dirt and debris. Nearly three years later, the exposed sewer lines under the river still haven’t been buried properly. When the next flood rips through the Hill Country, those lines could rupture, an expert says, causing millions of gallons of raw sewage to flow into the Llano River and other nearby sources of drinking water.
That’s just one potential problem that Katherine Romans, the executive director of conservation group Hill Country Alliance, was hoping to stave off by securing a portion of federal stimulus money for water infrastructure projects. The Biden initiative, called the American Rescue Plan Act, provided $1.9 trillion in no-strings-attached money for states to invest in infrastructure projects, public health, and other needs that might have fallen to wayside due to COVID-19- related budget shortfalls. “These communities are on the brink of losing their drinking water supply or having catastrophic failures with wastewater lines,” she says. Across the Hill Country, water infrastructure systems are nearing 100 years old and are in need of repairs for leaks as well as technological upgrades.
But the Texas Legislature declined to allocate any of those federal dollars to water infrastructure. The $1.9 trillion bill provided states a pool of money to invest in infrastructure projects, public health, and other needs that might have fallen to wayside due to COVID-19-related budget shortfalls. Texas received nearly $16 billion through the American Rescue Plan Act. The stimulus was one of President Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats’ top priorities this year.
