Austin City Council to consider buying more Onion Creek homes

June 26--

Antonio Romo has been fixing up his home near Onion Creek since the Halloween 2013 flood inundated the structure with more than four feet of water.

Still, if the city of Austin offered to buy the home, located on Onion Crossing Drive, Antonio Romo would consider it.

"If the price is right, I would sell," he said in Spanish, with his son, Brian, translating.

On Thursday, the Austin City Council will consider spending $35.5 million to buy and raze 140 homes near flood-prone , using money already collected from a $9.20-a-month drainage fee charged on Austinites' utility bills.

If completed, those buyouts would bring the number of homes the city has purchased in the area since the 1990s to more than 400. This fall, the council will consider a separate measure to buy about 300 additional homes in lower-flood-risk areas near Onion and Williamson creeks. That plan would involve raising the monthly drainage fee by 75 cents.

The goal is safety: to avoid a repeat of Halloween 2013, when severe flooding put hundreds of Onion Creek residents in danger and damaged many homes.

The homes were built before government regulations more strictly limited building in flood-prone areas.

The $35.5 million -- an average of $254,000 per home -- would include not just the cost of buying homes, but appraising them, ridding them of asbestos and demolishing them. The remaining area would become parkland.

The city began buying out homes near Onion Creek after a devastating 1998 flood. It targeted homes that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had identified as most at risk. The city spent nearly $37 million on 323 homes.

Then the Halloween storm hit.

After that flooding, the city cobbled together nearly $20 million to buy 116 homes; 90 have been purchased so far. The federal government also offered the city and Travis County an additional $11.8 million for buyouts, though it won't provide that money until it signs a deal with the city and county later this summer.

Many of the 140 homes that would be bought with the $35.5 million are outside of the high-risk zone identified by the Corps of Engineers, but they are still in a 25-year flood plain, meaning there is a 4 percent chance they will flood each year.

Many Onion Creek homes in the 25-year flood plain sustained significant damage on Halloween and had flooded in prior storms, said City Council Member Mike Martinez, who has worked with Council Member Laura Morrison and others to expand the buyout program.

"It's important to do everything we can to move these folks out of harm's way," he said.

The city hasn't decided how it will value and appraise the 140 homes. For prior Onion Creek buyouts, homes were appraised at their pre-flood values and any insurance money the owner had collected, but not spent on repairs, was deducted from the value, said Mapi Vigil, a managing engineer in the city's Watershed Protection Department.

In September, council members will consider spending $78 million to buy an additional 300 or so homes (near Onion Creek and flood-prone Williamson Creek), most of which are in 100-year flood plains, which means they have a 1 percent chance of flooding each year.

Mayor Lee Leffingwell has criticized that plan, saying it would jump the gun before the city had secured the $11.8 million for buyouts from the federal government.

Another problem, Leffingwell has said, is that Austin has many properties citywide that are in 100-year flood plains with a moderate flood risk. Buying such homes along Onion Creek could set a precedent and an expectation that the city will do that elsewhere, he has said.

Vigil said Onion Creek is unusual. "It is the highest risk area for flooding in Austin," she said.

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Onion Creek home buyouts, by the numbers

$36.5 million: Money the city of Austin spent in city and federal money prior to 2013 to buy out 323 homes near Onion Creek.

$19.6 million: Money approved by the city shortly after the Halloween flooding to buy 116 additional homes.

$11.8 million: Money the federal government offered to give Austin and Travis County for more buyouts. That would pay for roughly 40 homes in the city limits. The money hinges on a yet-to-be-signed agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

$35.5 million: Money the City Council might approve Thursday to buy about 140 homes along Onion Creek.

$58 million: Money the City Council will consider approving in the fall to buy about 220 homes in the Onion Creek watershed -- in addition to $20 million to buy about 70 homes in the Williamson Creek watershed.

840: The approximate number of homes that the city of Austin will have bought near Onion Creek if all of these plans are carried out.

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